Davena’s words from our last moments together floated back to me.
“It’s about who you make the home with.”
It wasn’t that the places we’d seen hadn’t felt like home. It was that Bill didn’t feel like home.
“Come here,” David said on his way out of the room, ripping me from my heartbreaking realization. I obeyed, following with my eyes glued to him. “You could put built-in seating there under that window,” he said in the kitchen, “and a breakfast nook on the other side. And look.” He pointed into the next room and said something. I leaned over to peer through the doorway, but I had no idea what I was looking for because my mind was whirring. Bill was so far, and David was so close. So close that if I angled slightly, I would whiff that earthy, subtle David-ness . . .
“Did you just smell me?” he asked.
Oh my God.
“What?” I drew back, blinking as I shook my head hard. “N-no. Of course not.”
“Yes, you did,” he said, a smile creeping onto his face.
I scoffed. “I did not. I was just trying to get a better look.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Well, I’m very close to you, and—okay, youdosmell nice, so itispossible that I sniffed you, I just . . .”
The look on his face stopped me. After a few moments of silence, he said, “You never answered my question.”
“I just admitted that Imayhave—”
“Not that one.” He paused. “Are you depressed, Olivia?”
I blinked in shock at the unexpected change in topic. I wanted to shake my head that no, I wasn’t. Not since he’d come back into my life the night of the wedding. But before that . . .
“You’re overthinking it,” he said. “Just answer. Don’t—”
“Do you ever think about that night?” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.
“Do you?” he asked.
“No. I don’t let myself.”
“Because of what you did?”
I glanced down, ashamed that my answer wasn’t what it should be. That wasn’t why.
“Do you regret it?” he asked.
“I hate myself for what I’ve done,” I said slowly. “I think about how it would hurt Bill if he found out. It would wreck him. The guilt is almost unbearable.”
David’s expression morphed into something tortured before he looked away.
“But . . .” I said.
He turned back, pinning me with intense eyes.
“But what I hate more,” I continued, “is that I don’t regret it. I don’t think about that night because I’m terrified that nothing will ever come close to it again.”
He inhaled sharply and locked his arms across his torso.
“That sounds crazy,” I said, shaking my head and looking away. “I guess for you it was just—”
“I think about it all the time. Our one night together.”
