She doesn’t say a word, but she doesn’t have to.
I canfeelit.
The hope.
The love.
The desire.
“I don’t need to keep looking for where I want to live. I already know.” My voice is getting thicker.
This isn’t how I should do it.
I shouldn’t tell her I love her while we’re in jail.
But I want her to know—I want her to know I want her in my life.
“My home—it’s kinda close to the city,” she says. “Comparatively speaking.”
“Doesn’t mean we ever have to go there.”
“But they—they can come to us.”
They.
Her family.
My family.
My family that I need to tell, to their faces, that I’m done.
With the company.
With the expectations.
With them, depending on how they take it.
“They’re all stupid billionaires,” I remind her. “They can go wherever they want. And they won’t come to us. They’re too caught up in their own lives to care that we’re happy living ours.”
She sinks into a squat, hands still on the bars, and keeps staring at me. “Falling asleep in your car was the best fuckup of my life.”
I swing to sitting, then cross the small cell so I can squat at her level and be as close to her as I can get. “It wasn’t a fuckup.”
“I don’t want this to be a Hindenburg principle either.”
The way she can make me laugh while we’re in two different jail cells—this is the kind of happiness I’ve been searching for my whole life. “Only one way to find out.”
“What if you hate it?”
“I have my serial—my, ah, hunting lodge in Pennsylvania.”
Her eyes nearly cross, and then she’s laughing. “You arenotwhat I expected.”
“I’m not sure I’m what I expected either, but I like this me. And we’re only getting started.”
“Oliver—changing your entire personality?—”
“I’m not changing my personality. I’m letting myself be who I want to be. I’vealwayswanted to stick queso in your ear. I’ve just never been brave enough to do it when I knew it wasn’t what a Cumberland is expected to do.”
