“Life and feelings and future.” He made a rolling motion with his hand.
Despite the impediment of her heart having found a new home in her throat, she laughed. Shook her head. “Oh, right. I hear how that sounds now.” Then she sobered. “No. He didn’t ask me to marry him. I broke up with him.”
Hew didn’t move. And his voice was so soft and low she was reminded of the barest whisper of wind when he asked, “Why?”
Ah, she thought. And here we are.
The two paths stretched before her, neither one more traveled than the other. Both full of possibilities and possible pitfalls.
She chose her course, the truth. And didn’t look back.
“Because it wasn’t fair to keep dating him when I don’t love him,” she admitted, watching her fingers fiddle with the stuffy because she couldn’t bear to face him when she spoke the words. “When I won’t love him.”
Her heart hammered in the momentary pause. Finally, his voice floated across the space between them. “How do you know ya won’t love him? Eventually?”
Her voice cracked under the weight of her confession. “Because I’m in love with someone else.”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, could only sit there. Waiting. Hoping.
Just ask it, Hew, she silently begged. Please ask it so the truth can set me free.
And then he did.
“Who?”
The lobster fell from her fingers when her hands flew out wide. The gesture was one of helplessness. One of surrender.
“You, Hew. It’s only ever been you.”
44
Sabrina’s smile was soft. Sad. But it was also fierce in the way broken things were fierce.
As Hew stared at her, he couldn’t help but wonder who had reached a hand inside his chest to squeeze his heart until it threatened to explode.
He was dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or hell, maybe he’d crashed and burned on the flight home, and this was heaven.
He’d never believed in heaven.
He wanted to believe in this.
She bit her lip and twisted her fingers together. “I know that’s probably not what you want to hear.” Her voice was raw with emotion. “Intimacy has already strained our friendship, and now I go and tell you this. But I couldn’t keep lying to you.”
A line appeared between her eyebrows. “That’s not true. I could keep lying to you, but I don’t want to. Because if we can’t hold on to everything else we’ve built together all these months, then at least we can hold on to the truth. To always being honest with one another and I?—”
She stopped abruptly when he kicked the door shut. The sound cracked like a gunshot in the quiet, and Peanut—nestled like a fat, furry sultan in the pillows on Sabrina’s bed—lifted his sleepy head and loudly meowed his displeasure.
Hew barely noticed.
And he certainly didn’t pause. Didn’t think. Just moved…halving the distance between them with long, prowling strides until his boots touched the tips of her bare toes as they poked out from the bottom of the blanket.
They were still purple. Still sparkly.
Still perfect.
The lamp on the nightstand cast her face in a golden glow, glinting off the mussed strands of her hair, painting her cheeks a tender pink.
“Say it again,” he growled, his hands flexing at his sides to keep from grabbing her up, tossing her onto the bed, and devouring her like he was a starving man dropped into the middle of a clambake.
