“You still scare me,” she said, looking down at their joined hands. “Everything has to be your way, and I don’t think I can live like that.” Her concerns were justified. He was over-bearing, opinionated, and controlling. That could cost him the one thing he finally realized had been missing from his life: Ava. “Tell me what I need to do. I’ll do anything.” A year ago, he couldn’t have imagined making concessions to please a woman, but she wasn’t just any woman. She was the one his heart had been leading him to for years. “You can’t change who you are any more than I can change who I am.” “I can try.” Or die trying. He refused to consider the possibility that his chance at happiness was slipping away. “Ten years. I’ve loved you for ten years. I didn’t even realize it. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think of you every day or even every week, but there was an emptiness I couldn’t shake. No matter what I did, where I went, who I dated, how much money I earned, I still felt empty.”
