“Yeah.”
“I was going to say?—”
“I know.” I smiled against his skin. “Yeah.”
He laughed, a low sound I felt more than heard, and pulled me closer.
I woke once in the blue-gray hours before dawn. At some point we’d made it to the bed. Jack was still asleep, his breath slow and even against my hair. One arm wrapped around my waist like he was afraid I’d disappear if he let go.
I wasn’t going to disappear. For the first time in twenty-seven years I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Here. Now. With him.
The city was quiet outside. Valentine’s Day. The day I’d walked away from him in another life, another timeline, another version of myself that had been too scared to stay.
Not this time.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift back toward sleep, feeling Jack’s heartbeat against my back, steady and certain. Tomorrow we’d figure out the details—the logistics of two lives becoming one, the practicalities of New York and careers and all the ordinary complications of choosing someone. Tonight, there was just this. Warmth, and quiet, and the sound of his breathing beside mine.
And somewhere deep in my chest, in a place I’d kept locked for decades, something that felt like hope began to unfurl.
17
Jack
Day 13 — Thursday, February 14, 1987 Valentine’s Day
I wokeup and the bed was cold as I reached across the sheets, and found it empty. No warmth. No weight against my ribs. Just the rumpled evidence that someone had been there and wasn’t anymore.
The old feelings came flooding back. The familiar, practiced dread that I thought I’d put away.She ran. She said she loved you and then she ran. You fell for it again, you stupid?—
Then I heard the clink of a mug from the kitchen. The faint hiss of water boiling. A soft, off-key humming that might have been Bryan Adams.
I closed my eyes. She was still here. And I realized, lying there with my heart still hammering from three seconds of thinking I’d lost her, that this was what trust felt like when it was new. Not the absence of fear. The decision to stay in the bed and listen for her voice instead of assuming the worst.
I got up. Walked to the kitchen doorway. She was standing at the counter in my T-shirt, pouring water into the French presswith the concentration of someone defusing a bomb. Her hair was a disaster. Her feet were bare on the cold tile. She hadn’t heard me yet.
I watched her for a moment. Just watched.
This woman who’d spent a year running from me. Who’d built walls so high I’d thought I’d never scale them. Who’d somehow become someone new in the space of two weeks.
Or maybe not someone new. Maybe just someone finally willing to be seen.
She turned and saw me in the doorway. Her face did something complicated. A look of surprise, then softness, then a smile that started slow and kept going.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“You look like you just had a heart attack.”
“I woke up and you weren’t in bed.” I leaned against the doorframe, going for casual, probably failing. “Old habits.”
Her face changed. She set down the kettle and crossed the kitchen to me, bare feet on cold tile, and put her hands on either side of my face.
“I’m here,” she said. “I just wanted to make you coffee.”
“I know.”
“I couldn’t sleep and the bodega on the corner opens at six and I thought—” She stopped. Read my face more carefully. “Jack. I’m not going anywhere.”
