Another flare of those gorgeous eyes. “What do you meananything else?”
“I mean, is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
“There are like five years of things, Brooks!” she snaps.
“Yeah,” I say, “and I’m going to be here to listen to each and every one of them.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
I smooth back her hair, something settling in me at the steel in her tone. “Maybe.” I draw her closer. “But I’m not going to lose you.”
“I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“That’s okay,” I murmur. “I do.”
She looks up, her eyes holding mine for a long, long moment. “I’m scared.”
“I know. But this time is different.”
“How? How can it possibly be different?” She sighs heavily. “They’re always watching. Always ready to pounce.”
“We have help,” I remind her. “We’re not keeping secrets.” Something flashes across her eyes, but I keep talking before she can go back to arguing with me. “We’re going to be okay.”
“I don’t think?—”
“Then let’s not think.”
“Again”—she throws up her hands—“you’ve lost your mind.”
“No. I lostyouonce and I can’t do it again. But, baby, we also can’t keep doing this, can’t keep looking back and regretting all the things that went bad, worried about what might go wrong. We need to live for today, live for each other, live for what we can build together.”
She closes her eyes and looks away, her words so quiet I can’t discern them.
“What’s that?”
A shake of her head.
“No more secrets, yeah?”
She sighs, and her eyes peel open.
But then she exhales and looks up.
And breaks my heart.
“I said, what happens when you leave again?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
BRIAR
I exhaleand stare up at the ceiling.
I know what I said wasn’t fair.
He’d explained.
I understood—understand.
