Say Yes by Kandi Steiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Surprise

“I’m so proud of you,” Angela said through the phone on the night of the exhibition. “I just wish I could be there to see it.”

“I’ll take pictures,” I promised.

“You better.” A pause. “I’m not just proud about the award, you know.”

“I know,” I told her.

“Do you miss me as much as I miss you?”

“Probably more. But how’s China?”

“Hot. And rainy. We’ve been in conference rooms with fancy bankers most of the time so far, though, so I don’t mind.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Hardly,” she said on a snort. “But we’re getting ready to draw up our first sketches, so it’ll get more exciting soon. How are you feeling? Ready to go home?”

I sighed, looking around the dorm at my suitcases sprawled out on the floor. They were mostly packed, save for the things I needed to get ready tonight and what I’d need for my last day tomorrow before I left for Atlanta.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’m packed. All my art from the semester has already been shipped home, except for the one on display tonight. They’ll ship that one later. So, physically, yes?” I frowned. “Emotionally? Probably never.”

“It was a magical summer,” she agreed on a sigh. “I’ll always remember it.”

“Me, too.”

“Will you come visit me in China?”

I laughed. “Probably not. An eight-hour flight is enough for me to know I wouldn’t last for a twenty-four-hour one.”

“Fine. But I’m bombarding you in Atlanta or Savannah or wherever you are the second I’m back in the States.”

“Promise?”

“Pinky.”

A moment of quiet stretched between us.

“Still no word from Liam?”

“No,” I answered. “But… it’s okay. Really, it is. I hate the way things ended, but I think having time alone has helped me see that I wouldn’t go back and change it, even if I could.”

“Not even to save yourself the misery of the last few weeks?”

I shook my head before realizing she couldn’t see me. “Not even then. When he first left, it was all I wished for. I’d be bawled up on the floor, sobbing, praying to go back in time and not walk into that leather shop that night. But now… I know it’s probably hard to believe, but I’d rather have the memories of what little time we had together than to have never experienced the summer with him at all and save myself the pain in the end.”

I paused, trying to figure out how to sum it all up.

“He taught me what love is,” I realized after a while. “Not just for another person, but for myself.”

“Well, that makes me want to throttle him a little less.”

I chuckled. “I’ve got to get going. Thank you for using your hard-earned architect salary to make a long-distance call. I know from the one I made to my parents, it costs a very pretty penny.”

“Worth every one. Soak it all in tonight, Harley. You deserve it.”

When we ended the call, I checked my reflection in the mirror one last time, smoothing my hands over the little black dress I’d bought at a boutique on the bridge. It was spaghetti-strapped and medium-length, with a modest slit in the thigh and lacy detail at the sweetheart-shaped neckline. I paired it with my only heels I had with me, black, sling-back kitten heels, and styled my hair in natural waves falling just over my shoulders. My lips were painted a deep matte burgundy, my eyeshadow a natural golden hue, and my lashes slicked with mascara. The only jewelry I wore were the pearl earrings my mother gave me when I turned thirteen.

I ran my fingers over them with a soft smile on my face, imagining passing them down to my little sister one day, too.

When I felt as ready as I could be, I took my time walking through the city streets to the museum. It was already bustling when I made my way inside, saying hello to classmates as I passed them, and accepting their congratulations on the award. I posed for a few photos, wondering if I’d end up in a forgotten scrapbook.

Professor Beneventi found me before I’d made it past the award-winning student sculptures from the semester, and he introduced me to a few colleagues before guiding me through the museum to where my piece was displayed.

My nose stung when I finally saw it, custom-framed and hanging at eye-level next to a small picture of me, and a plaque with my bio and intent. I smiled as I read it, since Professor Beneventi had been the one to write it, marveling at how he’d remembered every word I’d told him so clearly.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I’m honored,” I said sincerely. “And maybe a little speechless.”

He smirked at that, squeezing my shoulder. “I’ll leave you to enjoy your night with your classmates. And before you leave for home, I want you to know it was a pleasure teaching you, and that I look forward to seeing all the places your art will take you.”

“Thank you for pushing me,” I said, turning so I could look him in the eye. “I… I think I’ve always had a level of pity from my previous instructors that kept them from doing the same. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you seeing past my disability and knowing I had more to offer.”

“What disability?”

I gave him a leveled look, but he only smiled, squeezing my shoulder once again before releasing me and rejoining his colleagues.

I turned back to my work, which strangely felt foreign now that I’d been away from it for so long. In a way, I couldn’t believe it was me who had painted it. I was certain I could never replicate it. But I was also certain I could never forget it, that it was a part of me always, like a fragment of my heart carefully dissected and framed for the world to keep as her own.

“The Art of Hope, huh?” a low, familiar voice sounded behind me.

My heart jolted to a stop, the next beat sticking in my throat and unable to free itself as I turned and found Liam standing with his hands in the pockets of navy-blue dress slacks. The need to breathe was suffocating as my eyes took in the sight of him — the white button-up with the top two buttons unfastened, his messy hair, jaw freshly shaved and smile steady and sure.

I gasped on the breath when it finally found me, and in the next instant, my eyes flooded with tears, lips trembling, nose flaring as emotion gripped me by the throat.

I couldn’t have fought it if I tried.

“It’s beautiful,” he remarked. “Though, I think I liked your badass, pierced Venus better.”

I choked on a laugh that came out more as a sob, covering my mouth with both hands as I shook my head. I didn’t know whether I wanted to leap into his arms or slap him and storm away. And in my indecisiveness, all I could do was stand there and stare.

“Don’t cry,” he begged.

That only made the tears come harder, and I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain echoing in my chest. His hands gently brushed my elbows, pulling me closer, and I sucked in a breath at the touch, eyes blinking open as I reached for him, too.

“Are you really here?” I asked, rolling my lips together as my eyes searched every inch of him.

“I am,” he said.

“You’re… you’re real?”

He swallowed. “Come here.”

I shook my head, breaking our contact and tearing away from him. “No, you asshole,” I said, fighting against the overwhelming urge to fold into him. “You left. You left without telling me a single thing about where you were going. I thought I’d never see you again,” I said. “I thought… I thought you were dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Please, come here. Let me hold you, and I promise I’ll explain everything.”

“No,” I said, but I was already leaning toward him. I shook my head and tried to fight, but everything inside me wanted nothing more than for him to hold me just like he asked.

“Just let me explain,” he begged. “I promise, if you hate me after I do, I’ll let you slap me and kick me in the balls and whatever else you need to do to feel better.”

“Don’t make jokes right now,” I said, holding up one finger. Then, I just stared at him, shaking my head over and over as my brain tried to process the fact that he was standing in front of me. “You’re really here, aren’t you?”

“I’m really here,” he said. “And I really want to hold you. Please, Harley,” he said, holding out his hand for mine.

I stared at it for a long while, pride and anger having an all-out battle with my heart and soul. But in the end, I had no choice. I knew it as much as he did.

I slipped my hand into his.

And with a tug of my wrist, he pulled me into his arms.

I broke instantly, painful sobs wracking my chest as he held me and soothed me, one hand running through my hair as the other pulled me closer. My fists twisted in his shirt, and I knew between that and the mascara I was surely staining his shoulder with, I was making him a mess. But I didn’t care.

He’s here.

When I finally caught my breath, I pulled back, staring up at him still in disbelief. “You left,” I whispered. “You didn’t say goodbye, you didn’t tell anyone where you were going. You just left.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t find you. I tried emailing. I don’t have your number, and I thought… I thought…”

“I know,” he said, swallowing as he brushed my hair back. “I know. And I’m sorry. For so many things. For lying to you, for leaving you, for hurting you.”

“Why?” I asked, shaking my head. “Why did you leave? Where did you go?”

Liam frowned, thumb gliding along my jaw. “You were right,” he started. “About everything. I was scared. I was running. I was hiding behind the misguided belief that I could save both of us by denying my feelings for you.” His brows folded together. “Everything just got so real, so fast. I couldn’t stay away from you, even when I felt like it was the right thing to do. But the closer we got, the more I hated myself. It was this constant battle inside me, a war between what I wanted, and what I thought was right.”

I nodded, leaning into his palm.

“I thought I was doing the right thing by pushing you away,” he continued. “But the moment you were out the door, I realized how wrong I was.”

“But you left,” I whispered again. “You didn’t come find me, you left.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for that. But the truth is that my first apology couldn’t be to you.”

I frowned, tilting my head as I tried to decipher what he meant. “I don’t understand.”

Liam sighed, his shoulders deflating with the act, and his dark, earthy eyes flicked back and forth between mine. “When we got back from going away after the bombing, I had an email waiting from my mom. In it, she told me that Julie had found someone.”

“Oh, Liam…”

“No,” he said instantly, shaking his head. “It’s a good thing. I’m happy she found someone who makes her happy, because she deserves to be.” He swallowed. “But my mom told me she was still grieving for us, for me, for everything I did to her. And that sent me in a spiral.”

I closed my eyes as recognition dawned. “That’s why you weren’t in class.”

“It was a combination. That, and the fact that I knew I was falling for you, and I thought it wasn’t safe to. I was afraid I’d do to you what I did to Julie. I felt in the very depth of my soul that I would hurt you, inevitably, because of who I am at my core.”

I shook my head, but Liam didn’t give me the chance to argue with him.

“When you left that day, I felt this… pain,” he said, covering his chest with a fist. “This instant loss.”

“I know the feeling,” I whispered.

He nodded. “I know you do. And believe me when I say I wanted to go after you as soon as you left. But in that moment, I realized that before I could make amends with you, I had to make amends with three other women in my life.”

“So you flew home.”

“I did. I went home and I apologized to Julie, and to my mom, and my grandma, and I promised them I would be better for them — for me.” He swallowed. “They didn’t even let me in, the first night I showed up. Not that I blame them,” he added quickly. “I deserved to be left in the cold. But they finally let me apologize, and like the saints all of them are, they forgave me.”

I rubbed his back, listening, watching the memories replay in his eyes.

“It’s not going to be easy for us, not for a long time I imagine. But they forgave me,” he said again, like he still didn’t believe it. “And I guess that’s a step.”

“A very big one,” I assured him.

“I told them about you, too.”

I balked. “You did?”

“I did,” he said with a tilt of his lips.

“What did you tell them?”

He tucked my hair behind one ear, his eyes searching mine. “Can I show you something?”

I frowned at the subject change, but my brain was such mush at this point that I simply nodded, letting him take my hand and guide me out of the museum. We walked down a block and around a corner to a dark alleyway, but it was filled with people. I frowned, trying to figure out what they were staring at as they walked along each side.

When we got close enough for me to see, I gasped.

Hanging on both sides of the alley were the sketches of my hands from yes night.

Small flashlights hung above each of them, illuminating the charcoal lines, but these weren’t the original sketches. They’d been tampered with, splattered and outlined in shimmery gold paint, and they were outlined by gold frames, too.

“What is this?” I asked, shaking my head as we approached the first one. I took in the sight of my hands through another person’s eyes, the shading of my knuckles and smooth lines of my fingertips, the curves of my nubbins, the slim bones of my wrist.

“You brought color to my life, Harley,” he said, grabbing both of my hands in his until I tore my gaze from the sketches and looked at him, instead. “Not just color, but a fiery glow. A meaning. A purpose.”

The crowd around us was far away now, their chatter distant, the lights fading until the only thing I saw was Liam.

“Remember when I said I came here to do something, but I just hadn’t figured out what? Well, I think I came here to find you. To be found by you.”

I nodded vigorously, because I felt the exact same way. I knew that feeling as if it were my own, as if I’d been the one trying to explain it to him rather than him to me.

“I don’t know if you know what it’s like to truly lose hope,” he said. “To lose that feeling of wanting anything, or caring about anything, or believing anything is worth the time and energy it takes just to exist.” He pulled me closer, the tip of his nose touching the bridge of mine as he closed his eyes and dropped his forehead to meet me. “You made me want again. You made me laugh again. You made me hope and desire and care.” He swallowed. “You make life worth living.”

I rolled my lips together as two silent tears slipped free, and I pulled him closer, wanting to wrap him up in all that I was.

“That’s what I told them,” he said, lifting his head to look at me.

I swallowed. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes,” he said. “Say yes to forgiving me. Say yes to loving me,” he added with something between a laugh and a cry as I squeezed my eyes shut and released another river of tears. But he wiped them away as quickly as they’d fallen, framing my face in his hands. “Say yes to doing this stupid, crazy, incredible thing called life with me.”

I cried harder with every word he said, already nodding, already leaning into him and surrendering.

“Because I love you, Harley Chambers,” he whispered against my lips, his hands in my hair and holding me to him. “And I want you all to myself.”

With that final declaration, his lips were on mine, and I gasped into that bruising kiss as a tsunami of elation flooded my body and soul. I pressed up onto my tiptoes to deepen the connection, wrapping my arms around him and crying more when I felt his arms fully wrap around me in return.

The crowd I’d forgotten roared its approval around us, a flurry of applause and whistles echoing through the streets of Florence.

And I broke the kiss long enough to whisper one word.

“Yes.”

“Were you nervous?” I asked Liam later that night as we lay in my bed. My bags were no more packed than they had been before the exhibit. In fact, the room was even messier now, with our clothes littered on the floor and the comforter kicked off the bed. We were naked in the sheets, spent from hours of showing just how much we missed each other.

“A little,” he admitted, resting his chin in his palm.

I was spread out on my stomach, and he was on his side, drawing secret shapes on my skin. I’d dug through my suitcase long enough to pull out my CD wallet, and Oasis softly played from the stereo in the corner.

“I hadn’t seen her since I left, and we were engaged when I did. I knew how much I had changed, and I suspected the same would be true for her.” He made a humming nose just short of a laugh. “Honestly, I was worried she’d clock me more than anything.”

“You’d have deserved it.”

“No arguments here.”

“Did she?” I asked, adjusting my head position on my forearms. “Hit you? Or scream? Or… I don’t know, throw things?”

“Surprisingly, no,” he said. “She cried, though. As soon as she saw me.”

“You seem to have that affect.”

He tried to smile, but it fell short. “She looks different. Her hair is shorter, her cheeks more hollow. She’s not the girl I met in college anymore. She’s a woman.”

“What did she say?”

“Not much, honestly. I did most of the talking. But… she told me about her new fiancé, about how happy he makes her. And when she said she forgave me…” He sighed. “I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear that until I did.”

I rolled over to face him, pulling his knuckles to my lips and pressing a kiss there. “And your mom?”

“She and my grandma live together now.” He frowned. “Grandma’s not in the best of health. She told me she was worried she wouldn’t see me again before she died.”

“That’s heartbreaking.”

“It was. She and Mom both cried, too. And though Mom wasn’t afraid to tell me how angry she was when I left, and how badly it hurt her… she still forgave me, too.”

“Forgiveness is a powerful thing.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Most of us don’t,” I said. “But the funny thing about forgiveness is that it brings more relief to the person granting it than the person receiving it. Holding onto anger and blame is hard. It hurts. When we forgive, that’s when we can let go.”

Liam chewed on that for a moment before his eyes met mine. “You’re kind of smart, you know that?”

“Some would say Leonardo da Vinci smart.”

“Like the Ninja Turtle or?”

I poked his side.

“Ouch,” he said on a laugh, but then he pulled me into him, sweeping my hair from my face so he could kiss me properly. “Any other questions?”

“What did they say when you told them about me?”

He smiled. “Mom and Grandma said you sound like an angel sent straight down from God to save me.”

I snorted.

“Julie was relieved,” he added. “And happy for me. She said she worried I’d shut out anything close to love for the rest of my life after what happened.”

“You tried to.”

“I did,” he agreed with a sigh. “And then you had to come along and ruin my plans.”

I smiled, leaning into him for a long, slow kiss.

“What else?” he asked when we pulled away.

“I’m sure I’ll think of more,” I said, running my fingertip along the hair dusting his chest. “Right now, I think I’m still a little in shock.”

“I’ll answer them whenever you’re ready.”

I nodded. “Well, I guess I do have one more question.”

“Shoot.”

“What now? What do we do next?”

“What do we do next?” he echoed, cracking his neck before flopping onto his back. He pulled me into his chest, and I curled around him like a cat. “I guess we can’t stay here, can we?”

“Not unless you want to do another semester of school.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Nah.”

“So…?”

“I think we do something crazy,” he said, eyeing me with a cocked brow.

“Something crazy?” I repeated on a laugh. I pressed up onto my elbow, laying my hand on his chest. “Well, propose something. You already know my answer.”

“You’re going to say yes?” he asked, his brow arching higher. “To whatever I say next?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

I giggled. “Yes.”

“Okay. Move to Oregon with me.”

“Yes.”

He barked out a laugh. “You didn’t even hesitate.”

“There’s no hesitation in say yes night,” I reminded him. “What’s in Oregon?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Mountains. New stuff to paint.”

“Sounds like as good a reason as any to go,” I said with an unsure laugh.

“So, is that what this is?” he asked, rolling until he could sweep me into his arms. “Another yes night?”

“I think so.”

“Hmm,” he hummed against my lips before he captured them in a kiss. “Well then, while we’re at it, I want you to meet my family.”

My heart did a little flip. “Okay.”

“And I want to meet yours.”

A double backflip. “Okay,” I whispered.

“So… Connecticut, Georgia, and Oregon.”

“Can we make a pit stop in China?” I asked.

“China?”

“Angela is there…” I waved him off. “I’ll explain later, but there’s no stalling on yes night.”

He chuckled. “Okay, then, yes. China, it is. Whatever you desire, wherever you want to go… consider yes my standing answer.”

“That’s an awfully dangerous promise to make,” I teased, crawling on top of him.

The moment I straddled his waist, he groaned his approval, hands gripping my hips as he bit down on his lower lip. “I like to live life on the edge.”

I laughed, running my hands up his chest and lowering down to cover his mouth with mine.

“I love you,” I whispered, pulling back so he could see the honesty in my eyes when I spoke those words aloud.

“I love you,” he echoed, his gaze just as sincere.

We both inhaled when our lips connected again, breathing in the kiss, and Liam was hard and ready between my legs after the break. All it took was a shift of my hips and the tip of him slipped inside me, making us both shudder at the feeling.

I pulled back to watch him as I lowered down, slicking over him, feeling every inch as he pressed deep inside. His eyelids fluttered, mouth parting as he gripped my hips hard enough to leave a mark.

We didn’t get a single wink of sleep that night.

In the morning, Liam helped me pack the last of my bags, and we took full advantage of our last day in La culla del Rinascimento, strolling through the park and along the river, shopping, eating, drinking, and dancing whenever we heard music.

The sun was warmer. The breeze was cooler. Tastes were richer. Colors were brighter. Every sound was a melody.

As we sat on the same patio overlooking the river where I’d asked Liam to be mine for the summer, drinking wine and eating cheese and gazing into each other’s eyes like a couple of dopes, I found I had a permanent smile on my lips.

Where our story would go next, I couldn’t be sure. But there were two things I knew with absolute certainty.

Wine just tasted better in Italy.

And life just tasted better in love.