Page 177 of Wait for Him

I compromise with a soft knock as I push the door open.

Michael is mid-sentence when he looks up and sees me. He stops, the color draining out of his face, and for a second neither of us moves.

"Rosalie."

It's barely a whisper.

"Hi, Mikey." I smile, my hands wringing together in front of me because the confident new woman in the mirror didn't survive the three-minute-and-eighteen-second commute.

"Rosalie."

He says it again, and then he's moving.

"Fuck. Rose. Holy shit, you're here!"

Each word gets louder as he crosses the room, and I barely have time to brace before he tackles me clean off my feet. His arms lock around me and mine go around his neck automatically. He’s squeezing so hard I can't breathe, and then I feel his body shaking.

My big, grown-ass, CEO baby brother is sobbing into my shoulder in the middle of his own party, and the sound of it cracks every bit of control I spent the last hour trying to hold together.

I bury my face against his neck and hold him tighter. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I missed you so fucking much."

I can feel everyone watching us, all the people who were talking and laughing when I walked through that door having stopped. Normally I'd care. I'd straighten up, wipe my face, make a joke and get everybody comfortable again before my emotions became inconvenient for them.

Not tonight.

Fuck, I missed this man. So I keep my arms around my brother and let him cry, and for once I don't try to clean up the moment for anybody.

I just cry with him.

Jackson

"Hi, Mikey."

That's the sound that stops me mid-conversation with Jade, Rian, and Joseph. Three syllables, and the voice goes straight through me before my brain even catches up. Every muscle I own goes still. Across the room, Bennet has gone rigid too, stiff and lock-jawed, his eyes fixed on the door.

I can't look.

Fuck. I can't see her.

Not now. Not like this.

My attention follows him because it was always going to, because there was never a version of this where I keep my eyes in my lap. Then they land on her, and I don't have time to prepare for any of it.

Fuck me.

My breath catches in my throat. My eyes water. My mouth goes dry, and my fists clench and unclench against my thighs while every conversation around me disappears.

She's wrapped around Bennet, both arms around his neck, and fuck, those arms. They're muscular now, actual carved definition where there wasn't any before. She's wearing black jeans, black lace-up ankle boots and a plain white T-shirt tucked in at the waist. Her hair falls loose in dark waves around her face, and there's a silver-bright streak running through them on both sides.

She's fucking beautiful.

Different. Stronger. There are changes everywhere I look, enough that I know I've missed an entire version of her becoming this woman, but she's still Rose. I would know her in any room, in any fucking lifetime.

And I'm staring.

I know I'm staring, and I can't stop because some panicked part of my brain is convinced she's going to disappear again if I look away for too long. Seven months became ten, ten became a year, and now she's standing twenty feet away from me like I didn't spend every one of those months wondering where she was.

Bennet finally sets her down and they stand there wiping tears from each other's faces. The room descends on her almost immediately. Jade gets there first, then Blaire, Jenn, everyone pulling her into hugs one after another while I sit exactly where I am.