She closed her eyes and drew in a lungful of fragrant air.
Could she take a leap of faith? Truly live in the moment, as she’d believed she had been all along…this time with Mac by her side?
Did she dare?
“What happens next season, Mac?” she asked him. “Or in the future, if we get married and have kids? What if I get hurt again? I won’t give up chasing. I can’t, Mac. I owe it to my family to make sure their deaths weren’t in vain. That others don’t die the same way. If it’s not my own research that makes the breakthrough, then maybe it’s something I do, something I record, that will be the missing piece for another scientist’s work. I need to know I will, in some way, further our understanding of tornadoes. It’s what gives me hope for the future.”
He let out a long sigh. “When we met, I scoffed at the idea of hope.” He lifted his shirt and ran a finger over Trust inked on his side. “Scoffed at that, too. Thought they were useless emotions meant only to crush a person’s spirits when they inevitably failed.” Dropping his shirt, he cupped her cheeks in his hands. “You gave them back to me. I have hope for a future now.” His grip on her tightened. “With you. I have hope for children, grandchildren. You are the one by my side when I see those things.”
A tear escaped and slid down her cheek. “And trust?”
“I trust you. I trust you with my life and my heart.”
She let out a soft sob, and Mac gathered her to his chest. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she clung to him.
“I love you, Gayle Matthews,” he whispered. “With everything in me.”
Her heart swelled. He’d said the words. All three of them. Hope. Trust. Love. And she believed him. Believed the changes in him that she could see written so plainly in his earnest eyes.
She drew strength from his certainty, from him, and lifted her head to look up at him. “Even though I always knew you might leave me in the end, when you walked out on me at the hospital I was devastated.”
A pained grimace contorted his face, and he started to say something.
She stepped out of his embrace and held up her hand. “Let me finish. You never made light of your baggage. You’ve always been honest with me. Now it’s time for me to be honest. I’ve come to realize I’ve spent the last three years doing the same thing you’ve done for the last four.”
His throat worked on a swallow. “Gayle, I—”
She shook her head, cutting off his words. “I’m carefree, fun, live-in-the-moment Gayle Matthews. She embraces life, right?” She paused, allowing the truth to seep deep within her before saying it. “But I don’t. Not really. When you truly embrace life, you embrace it all, including the possibility for pain. You gamble your heart because the joy is worth it. But I took my heart off the table years ago, terrified of being hurt.”
Mac reached for her, but she waved him off. As she studied him, awe expanded her chest. “After everything you’ve been through, here you are, gambling on a future of uncertainty with me. Not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Fully knowing what you have to lose, because you’ve lost so much before.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “That’s the real risk of winning love, isn’t it? Loving someone, even knowing one day you could lose them.”
He swallowed and gave a jerky nod. “Yeah. But I know now it’s so worth the risk.”
She smiled. “I do, too. And I’m so ready to win, so ready to give my heart to you.”
A curse burst out of him as he scrubbed his palm over his face. “Thank God. You scared the crap out of me.”
“Mac Hannon, I love you so much. I’m all in. You have me. All of me—my hope, my trust, and my love.”
He pulled her to him and gazed down at her. “Gayle, you brought me back from the dead. You’ve made me live again, enjoy life again. I will never be able to show you how much I love you.” Caressing her jawline, he kissed her gently. “But I will spend every damn day trying.”
Smiling at last, she looped her arms around his neck and tugged his head down. As he made good on his vow, her heart swelled to bursting. Here in Mac’s arms, facing the uncertainty of the future together—that was truly living in the moment. That was what love was about. Whatever they faced, they would do it together.
As they pulled apart, a funnel lowered from the wall of clouds in a distant field. Mac wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into his side as they watched it descend and make touchdown. No tension crept into his body as the twister grew in size, whirling across the horizon. He simply kissed the top of her head and said, “Dorothy was right.”
She tilted her head back. “What do you mean?”
He gently kissed her lips one more time, then whispered, “There’s no place like home.”
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