Imagine my surprise when I opened my mailbox and found your letter and the picture. I looked at it and read your letter. Then I read it a dozen more times, railing against myself for not seeing the obvious.

I found this snippet in a journal I keep. A snippet I’d written intending to send you at some later date in a letter. But then I figured today was precisely the day I needed you to read it, because it’s the truth.

As you slept, the rain fell outside and warm, I lay with you, naked, against your heart and body and you were mine. You are mine, and I don’t think I know all the words to tell you just what that means. Only that when you breathe, I do, when you smile just for me everything inside me stills and knows it’s found the key.

He’d sketched her on the paper, a quick pencil sketch of her shoulders and the top of her back, of the way her hair had swept forward over her face.

This is what I see. This is what I feel. This is what I want to feel every day for the rest of my life, and you’re the only one who can make me this way. Let me love you, and I promise you all of me.

I love you,

Andrew, Cope and Andy

PS—Look out front when you’re ready.

She read it twice more and, holding it to her heart, she went to her windows and looked outside. He stood there, looking up at her windows as he leaned against his truck, and when he saw her, his face lit with a smile so beautiful it nearly felled her.

Instead, she smiled back and waved.

He motioned up and managed to put a question on it, so she nodded.

And then she ran to the bathroom and tried to tame her hair, wished she had enough time for at least a bit of styling but opted for a quick, one-handed brush of her teeth while she buzzed him up.

She opened the door with a yank, not pretending she wasn’t anxious.

He came into her arms just the way he was supposed to, and it felt so right she just gave in and began to cry.

“Shh. Ella, baby, please don’t cry. I’m sorry for making you upset. I’m sorry I hurt you. I just want to be with you, and if that means realizing that something worth having is also something I’d be devastated at losing, then so be it.”

He kissed her eyelids.

“I love you. When all this craziness with Erin and the baby and Brody and Elise’s wedding is past, will you marry me? We can plan it for the anniversary of our first official date, though I can tell you the first day I saw you, May fifth, we can get married then too. Or tomorrow, or in two years. Whatever. I just want you. Every day forever.”

“You have me. And yes, I’ll marry you on the anniversary of that first date, though it makes me all smooshy inside to know you remembered the first day you met me. That was my third day at the café. I remember it too. I’d never seen anything like you before. You sort of scared me at first, still do I suppose, because I can’t understand how you could want me. But it doesn’t matter, because you do and I want you right back and those blonde skeezoids you were a boy skeezoid with can f**k right off.”

He laughed as he angled her onto the bed, pulling her clothes off. “They’re not skeezoids; they’re just not you.” At her look, he rolled his eyes. “Okay so one or two might be, probably the ones you have bumped into.”

“Andrew, you are aware that no one should be that shade of orange unless they’re an Oompa-Loompa, right?”

She was still laughing when he thrust into her body, choking off the sound, filling her and bringing a soft sigh of homecoming.

“I’m not wearing a condom,” he said softly in her ear. “We’d sort of discussed this as the next step, but I wanted to be sure before I move again. Because this feels so good I might just blow if I pull out and push back in even once.”

“Yes. Yes it’s fine. More than fine, it’s fabulous and beautiful, and you feel so good if you don’t move soon, I’m going to pass out from frustration.”

He nipped her neck and rolled them so she was on top. His favorite position and one she liked an awful lot too. “How can I resist all this masculine beauty spread out beneath me? How’d this happen, Andrew Copeland? How did I rate someone like you to love and to be loved by? Do you want to know what I think?”

“As long as you tell me while you’re f**king me.” He sent her a hopeful smile, and it was her turn to laugh. She circled her hips, keeping him deep, loving how it felt and that she knew it tortured him with pleasure.

“You make me feel like a siren. Did you know that?”

He slid his hands up from her hips to cup her br**sts. “Red, you are a siren. Now tell me, oh holy shit, yep, like that. That’s new, I like it.”

She ground herself down onto him, moving her hips from side to side. “I like it too.”

“There she is,” he said when she’d sort of growled the last.

“I think that you’re my blue ribbon. Not only because you look so good, and let’s face it, Andrew Copeland, you look fine. Damn I have never seen a more beautiful man in my whole life. But you’re my blue ribbon because you’re good and kind, compassionate and you love me. Shelter me, protect me, trust me to protect myself and make my own choices. You are my blue ribbon for waiting and taking the hard way to get right here to this spot.”

“Just when I think I can’t love you any more, you prove me wrong.”

“I made an appointment for later today. Raven is doing a piercing for me.”

He stilled, his c**k still deep within her. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders to get better balance.