He nods.
“Does it feel fake to you?”
“Hell no,” he growls. “But maybe it’d be easier if it were.”
I grip his forearm, feeling his muscles straining through his suit jacket. “We’re long past that, Rhett. I know it hasn’t been a long time?—”
“It feels like it has,” he cuts in, making my heart pick up speed. “When I’m with you, Sunshine, time moves differently. It feels like we’ve been together longer than we actually have.”
“I get that,” I agree.
“I interrupted,” he says. “What were you going to say?”
“Hey, if interrupting means you say stuff that fills my belly with butterflies, go nuts.”
“You’re magic, Elle.”
My cheeks heat up even as I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Magic, huh?”
“The way you can smile and be happy even after something so traumatic. It couldn’t have been easy seeing him.”
“It wasn’t. But you’re here, and that makes a difference.”
He smiles at me. “You’re so beautiful. Inside and out.”
“So are you.”
He laughs dryly.
“I mean it,” I say.
“A beautiful killer.”
“You’re a good man who does things some people would call bad,” I tell him. “That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. And youarebeautiful.”
We share a moment of heavy eye contact, then my cellphone rings. I answer it quickly when I see Mira’s name, my mind lighting up with all kinds of ugly possibilities.
Mira isn’t talking right now, so if someone is calling from her phone…
I don’t even want to go into detail, but the ugliness is endless.
When I hear Mira’s voice, I let out something like a sob. “Sissy?”
“Mira, you’re talking!”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Marshall and I, we played this game, like this memory game where you have to say a bunch of stuff you get at the grocery store. I was writing mine down, but then my hand started to ache, so I just saidpears, and then when I said that, it felt easier to say the next bit and the next bit. It’s really hard, Sissy, but I like it here. These are super nice people.”
I smile so hard my cheeks actually ache. “I’m so happy to hear that.”
“I was calling because it’s so fun and we’re getting pizza, and I was wondering if I could stay over.”
“Stay over?” I ask.
“Yeah. We’re going to have a movie night, and Lucy said she’s making pancakes for breakfast, and it’s just… it’s like a family, Sissy.”
My heart cracks when I hear the hope in her voice. “What about clothes?” I ask.
“There’s a big store, a superstore, Marshall called it, and he said we can go and get some.”
