Free When It's Right by Jeanette Grey Page A

lurching subway car: that there was a restaurant named after her, here, and that they should go there someday. Together. It had felt right—so much better than standing still where he had left her.
    So she’d gone there, and she’d waited, just like she’d waited for all these years. She was waiting there still.
    There were just a few minutes left to go ’til midnight, though, and her heart twisted harder. It wasn’t their last chance, of course it wasn’t, but he’d said he wanted to kiss her. At midnight. And she hadn’t had a chance to tell him she wanted that, too.
    Yet again, she let her gaze move back across the crowd as she stood against the brick wall of Cassandra’s restaurant. Alone amidst the crowd, she worked to put on her very best fake smile.
    Only then it wasn’t fake. It wasn’t fake at all. It was blindingly, blissfully, impossibly real.
    The sob that hadn’t been a sob, damn it, morphed and twisted in her lungs until the laughter bubbled up, hot and full of too much relief for her to contain. She brought her hands to her mouth and clasped them tight.
    For the second time in as many days, the very instant she’d been ready to give up on him, Nate was there. Smiling and slow but catching up, late to the party but there . And hers.
    For the first time, she let herself believe that he was hers.
    He parted the crowd, a grin splitting his face the way it felt like her smile was breaking hers. With his hat sitting crooked on his head, his coat askew and her purse slung over his shoulder, he made his way toward her. And he looked so beautiful, so familiar. There in the midst of so much strangeness, he looked like home.
    And he’d come for her. He’d come for her.
    It wasn’t until he was just a foot away from her that she saw the flicker of doubt marring the brightness of his eyes. The uncertainty she had sensed in him all day. She straightened her spine. She had put that look there. And she was going to take it away.
    His grin shifted to become a wry, raw thing, and he stopped short, even though his arms were open. He dropped them to his sides, speaking before she could. “Fancy seeing you here.”
    Something hard underlay the casual affect to his voice. Her own smile faded, becoming something softer and oh-so tender as she lowered her hands. Her fingers itched inside her gloves to touch him.
    “What can I say?” That I love you. That I’ve always loved you. The words she wanted to speak refused to come, and she found herself adopting his teasing tone, but it didn’t sound right on her tongue. She glanced up at the awning above them to hide her eyes. “A reliable source told me this place was worth checking out.”
    “Well, I don’t know about that.” Emotion leaked around the edges of his words, drawing Cassie’s gaze back to his mouth. His bottom lip crumpled before evening out. “All I know is that it has a beautiful name.”
    Just like that, any pretense that things were normal between them faded away. They were standing outside, in the cold and brilliant night, on the cusp of so much more than just a new year, but they could just as well have still been in that darkened subway station, confessions lying bare and naked between them.
    As she had so many times before, she picked up their conversation right where they’d left off. “Nate…” She stepped away from the wall, her heart thrumming with everything she was about to expose. “I know everything you told me back there, about how you’re not good at this. And I think you’re right.”
    His whole posture seemed to lock down, hurt dancing, just barely concealed, around the edges of his eyes. Like he was bracing himself for rejection, and her chest ached for him and for herself, for the words she had to bring to bear. She shook her head before he could deflect, before he could say anything.
    He’d put himself out there. She could do it, too.
    “I don’t…” she started, hesitating before beginning again. “I don’t want