Beau must read that something’s not right by the look on my face because he steps into the hallway and lets the door all but close.
I glance to my right, then to my left. There’s no one. “Are the kids asleep?” I ask.
He nods. “Zonked out since they played so hard.”
I nod too. “Same with Jack and Lenny. Did you know Lenny’s in our room? Well, we got two joined rooms since Greg was supposed to come, but…yeah.”
“Yeah.”
I strangle the life out of the ribbon in my grip. “I’ve been thinking.” I jump ahead to the heart of the matter because if we’re going to do what I want us to do, then we’ll have to get moving.
Sadly, it only comes out in pieces. “What if we…” I nod, wondering if that’s enough for him to catch onto my idea. The way I look at it, it’s obvious.
“What if we,” he urges, so I give him a little more.
“Drove back home…”
Beau is lifting and lowering his chin to follow my eyes as I nod.
“And…” I add. “If we leave now, while the kids are asleep. Of course, you’ll tell Parker so he’ll know he’s in charge of Paige and I’ll tell Jack so he doesn’t wake to find me gone and panic.”
Beau starts waving his rather big hands in front of him. They’re hooked to even bigger arms, his muscles bulging in the shadowed light. “Could you try finishing a sentence, please?”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he says through a yawn before toying with his hair and rubbing his face again. He’s tan. Naturally. Probably Italian. “Well?”
“Huh?”
He huffs out a breath. “What is it that you’re trying to tell me?”
I release a trapped breath and nod, twiddling the ribbon I found in Greg’s garment bag while sorting his laundry. I can do this. “You’re not going to want to hear this,” I warn. “But I’ve been suspecting it for a while now, so…”
His eyes, once dazed, seem to zone in all at once, coming into full focus on me. “Go ahead,” he urges.
“Do you already know?”
“I might.”
It feels like my heart might beat itself to death. “Maybe you should say it.”
“I’m not going to say it. You’re the one who showed up here at midnight.”
“Yeah, but I ran out of bravery on the way here, I guess.”
“You can’t run out of bravery.”
“You can too. It’s a thing.”
“It isnota thing.” He steps forward the slightest bit, and the door comes to a full and final close. “Great, now I’m going to have to wake them up to get back in.” He looks at me like this is all my fault. It’s not. But if I’m right, we do have someone to blame.
“Okay,” I say, pumping myself back up. “It’s coming back. I’m working up the courage again.”
“Good, nice.” He rubs his hands together. “You can do this.”
I pictured myself saying this one line all the way here. And for two entire hours before working up the nerve to shuffle through the hotel halls to get here. I open my fist and glance down at the ribbon wadded in my palm, the gold Gucci logos plain to see.
I glance back up in time to see Beau glaring at it.
