I was so happy to have her back—and so happy when she’d agreed to stay with me again tonight—that I hadn’t thought about how this conversation was going to go. Or how it might be awkward to see one another again after that night.
“Amy,” I say, stepping toward her, taking her hand in mine. “I’m sorry for the way I acted that night. I didn’t even give you a chance to explain yourself.”
“In your defense,” she whispers, her eyes dropping to the floor, “I was working for McKay up until today. It took a lot for me to let go of that, even knowing about some of the terrible stuffthey’d done. And Nathan made it seem pretty believable that I was working against you the entire time.”
I give her a joking look. “You weren’t, right?”
She rolls her eyes, cuffing me on the arm. “Right—I—everything was real for me, Evan. It’s important to me that you know that.”
“I think blaming you was an easy way to cope with what was happening,” I admit, clearing my throat, knowing that, with Amy, I talk more than I have in the past ten years combined. “I was so used to relying on myself, and I let myself think it was trusting you that led to that outcome, rather than just accepting that bad things can happen, and sometimes you don’t have control.”
She nudges into me, wrapping her arms around my chest and tucking her head under my chin. I breathe her in, tugging her close, knowing that as long as I get to wake up next to her each morning, I’ll be okay.
“I was afraid to admit things were getting serious with you,” she whispers, her jaw moving against my chest. “Because I thought that meant sacrificing my career. And I was still trying to convince myself that my career was the most important thing to me.”
I grab her by the shoulders, hold her at arm’s length, just now processing something. “You quit your job at McKay,” I say, scanning her face.
She nods.
“So, what are you doing now?”
As much as I hate that company, I get a sinking feeling about her losing all the progress she made. Having to start over somewhere new.
“I’m not entirely sure right now,” she admits, clearing her throat. “But I have enough savings to get me by while I figure it out. Beverly mentioned something to me about a job for the town—working on tourism, managing other restoration jobs.”
“Do the lodge next,” I mutter, and she laughs, that same blanket of nervousness rolling over her face again.
“What?” I ask, eyes darting over her, trying to figure out what it is that’s making her so anxious. “What’s wrong, Amy?”
“I…” She clears her throat and looks to the ceiling, as though for strength. “I was actually wondering how you’d feel about renovations to the cabin.”
“To the cabin?” I echo, not following her.
She nods, taking a few steps away, pushing open the door to the guest bedroom. The place she slept when she came that first night. The room we completely ignored after that, when it was obvious she was much more than a guest.
“For a home office?” I guess, already nodding and stepping into the space, looking around, thinking of how I could easily build her a desk, some bookshelves. We might even want to permanently mount the internet satellite if she wanted to make video calls.
“Actually,” she says, and when I turn, my eyes locking with hers, she gives me a watery smile. “I was thinking more like… a nursery.”
“A nursery,” I parrot again, because apparently the only thing I’m capable of is repeating the last thing she’s said. It takes an embarrassingly long time for the information to process in my head, and when it does, my eyes drop down to her stomach. “A nursery,” I whisper, stepping toward her, feeling my face transform with this news.
Amy nods, tears brimming in her eyes as she looks up at me. I take another step toward her, brushing the hair off her forehead, wiping her tears away with the pads of my thumbs. “Yeah,” she says, hiccupping. “If you want it.”
“If I—” My words cut off. There are no words that I could possibly use to express what I’m feeling. Instead, I pick her up, twirl her around the room, holding her as tightly as I can—without squeezing. “OfcourseI want it, Amy. I wantyou, Amy. All of you. Whatever your future looks like, I want to be right there with you.”
She hiccups again, laughing as I stop spinning and set her down. “Really?”
“I was ready to move to Denver for you,” I say, point-blank, knowing that, as much as I would have hated the city, I would have missed her more. “If that’s what it took.”
The hiccup turns into a noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and this time, she’s the one stepping forward, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss me.
We stumble backward out of the guestroom—nursery—together and into our bedroom, slowly stripping off our clothes, falling into bed, languid and slow and loving.
I touch her like I’m never going to let her go, and when she’s naked before me, I bracket my body over hers, leaning down towhisper in her ear and let her know that I’ll never stop making up for every kiss we missed while she was gone.
EPILOGUE
AMY - THREE YEARS LATER
