Free Say It Strong (Say You Love Me Book 2) by Virna Depaul Page A

Unless...”
    “Unless?” she asked.
    “Unless it was no accident. You followed me here.” I made spooky, crazy eyebrows that made her giggle. “Abby Chan, you’re not stalking me, are you?”
    I was relieved to find that her sense of humor was a little more intact today. “No.”
    “Good. Because this just might be a sign.”
    “This?”
    “This…us meeting here. Kismet, grokking.”
    “I have no clue what you’re talking about.” She laughed, shaking her head. I hoped she was finding me silly in a cute way, not stupid.
    “It’s the utter horseshit again, remember?” I laughed. “What I mean is, my parents have always believed in signs. And they’ve been married thirty years. Thirty years. Complete and total opposites, my parents are. Fell in love at a U2 concert at eighteen, and they’ve been together ever since.”
    “Wow, that’s amazing.”
    I nodded. “It really is. They’re very inspiring to me, you know. In this world where everyone gets divorced at the drop of a hat, my mom and dad are still there, still having fun, still proving everybody wrong.”
    “Why do you think that is?” she asked.
    “Because they have fun,” I said. That was the truth. My parents didn’t take stuff so seriously. They always knew when to say fuck it and go have a beer outside, or fuck it and go make love upstairs, or fuck it, let’s take the kids on a vacation . We don’t have the money, but who cares? Let’s do it anyway.
    “You look happy about that,” she said, snapping me out of my daydream.
    I was staring at her, her skin so perfectly smooth, shiny, and flawless. I loved her eyes, too, and more than anything, her full, sensual mouth. I imagined it doing sinful things to me. “I am. My parents are the best. I have pretty awesome brothers, too.”
    “That’s wonderful.” She fidgeted and started to pick at her cuticles. “Now that I’ve run into you, I just wanted to say something. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”
    I honestly had no clue what she was talking about. I felt dizzy, as if I wasn’t fully awake from a dream.
    She went on, “I was completely out of line to tell you that I’m not like one of your groupies. First of all, it was presumptuous of me to even assume that you would have any…” She glanced at me for a nanosecond. I wasn’t going to agree with her. “And secondly, you were just being sweet.” She pressed her lips into a sad smirk. “What I should have said was thank you.”
    “Oh. You’re welcome.”
    Wow. That was a one-eighty. A woman who could admit she was wrong? Impressive. Sweet. I admired her even more now. This was looking better by the second. Maybe this was my chance to talk to her some more, get a sense of whether she’d want to board my crazy train of a life for even a short time.
    I invited her to sit next to me on the stone bench. “So maybe I’m right.”
    “About what?” she asked.
    “About us meeting here. Maybe it’s a sign. We should talk more often.” I smiled. Luckily, she smiled back. “Both of us coming here, in this little corner of…” I scanned the familiar grounds. “Where are we today?”
    “Seattle Center,” she said.
    She didn’t argue about us getting to know each other more. That was definitely promising. “See? You have all the answers. I like that about you.”
    “I don’t have all the answers. Just that one.” Abby chuckled.
    “I bet you have more. I bet you probably know every city we’re going to, how many hours it’ll take to drive between each town, and exactly what time every show starts.”
    She frowned. “Are you mocking me, Liam? You assume that because I play cello, I’m straitlaced, and nerdy, that I probably got straight A’s in school and a full scholarship to college?”
    She may be frowning, but she could not get me that easily. “Because I’d be right, right?”
    Abby laughed out loud, the most angelic sound I had ever heard in my life. Even her voice matched her music. “You got me