“Your bio family?”
“Yeah.” He fingers the second envelope, as though he’s afraid to open it. But then he taps it, so the paper falls to one end, and he rips the top of the short end, tugging the pages out.
When I glance over, the handwriting on the pages is visible, and he’s already absorbed as we climb. At his apartment door, I use my key to get us in, and then he takes my hand and leads me to the living room couch while he continues reading.
Each page he finishes, he passes to me, silently, and then I read them before setting them on the side table.
After he finishes the final page, he passes it to me. He yanks off his tie, discards his suit jacket, and then he leans back in the couch and releases a deep sigh. It’s not until I’ve finished and set the last page on top of the others that he speaks.
“Part of me hoped it didn’t match.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I want to belong. I’ve wanted to belong forsolong. Maybe it was easier to believe they didn’t want me than to believe that they didn’t know about me.”
Grief streaks through me at his words. Who finds it easier to believe they’reunwanted?
“They knew she left, but they never knew for sure that she had the baby. No one ever tracked them down to tell them she died because she had the neighbor who watched me as next of kin. They were pretty honest in there, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t read all of your mom’s diaries, but her parents didn’t seem to paint themselves as in the right with all the decisions that were made. Seems like they have a lot of regrets.” And if there’s one thing I can understand, it’s how badly one misguided decision can snowball, take you in directions you’d never have wanted to go. “Might be worth talking to them?”
He seems lost in thought for a beat, and then he tugs me over against his side, tucking me close.
“We both know what happens next for me, right?” he murmurs against the top of my head.
“A trade.”
“Might come fast. Might come slow. But at some point in the next couple of weeks, it’s coming.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I try to swallow it down instead of letting the sob escape. The idea of never being like this with him again causes my stomach to drop out.
“Would you—” he says, clearing his throat. “Is there a world where you would consider going with me? Coming with me wherever I’m traded?”
My entire caseload is almost all pro bono or low-income clients who wouldn’t be able to afford physiotherapy without me. I can only afford to fund their care because I’ve developed ways to funnel the Tucker trust money into my business, andI can live off the Tucker money alone. Other clinics can’t offer what I do at the scale I do.
But part of me still wants to say yes. To throw away everything I’ve built on the island. Follow Logan to the ends of the earth. The yearning streaking through my limbs to clutch him close, attach myself to him in some way is almost unbearable.
“My clients…” It’s all I can get out around that stupid lump that keeps threatening to choke me.
“Yeah,” he says, kissing the top of my head. “I figured. But I had to ask. I had to.”
Sadness is settling over us, and if I sit here in it for a minute more, I’m going to release all my pent-up emotions. I’ll beg him to stay. I’ll agree to go. I’ll forego all the things I want for his needs. Another relationship where I’ve learned nothing.
So, I slip out of his embrace, and I straddle him while I start to unbutton his dress shirt. A hint of a smile tips one corner of his mouth, and his soft gaze is so full of love that it makes my heart ache again. Months ago, he was so closed off, I’m not sure I’d have believed that the expression on his face right now was even possible, let alone that it would be directed at me someday.
I frame his face, and I kiss him, gently, questioningly. While I know I can’t sit in these complex emotions for even another beat, I don’t know how he’s feeling. But his large hands grip my ass and tug me closer, and it’s immediately clear that I’m not the only one thankful for a distraction.
“I’m always going to be grateful for you,” he murmurs against my lips. “Grateful to you.”
I grip his face, and I press my forehead to his. “I don’t want to be sad. There’s so much time for sad.”
“What do you want to feel instead?” he asks, voice gruff.
“You. Inside me.”
“My favorite place,” he says, kissing me again, one of his hands in my hair while the other urges me to rock against him.
Then my shirt and bra are gone, and his dress shirt follows quickly, so we’re chest to chest, kissing and grinding. It’s the closest to PG we’ve been in a long time, but the simplicity suits my mood. Close to him is all I want—more than a release, more than a grand distraction—I want to savor being with him like this, loving him like this, knowing he’s mine like this.
