“Oh,” I say. I’m not sure if that means he wants me to stay. Then he pats the bed beside himself.
“Come back here.”
I still hesitate.
He frowns. “You don’t trust easy, do you?”
“No,” I sigh softly. “I guess I don’t.”
His beard twitches, and I imagine a muscle in his jaw working. When he speaks, his voice is laced with anger. “Who hurt you?”
I sit on the edge of the bed and blow out a small breath. “I was a nurse at a hospital. I started dating a doctor, and it was the happiest I’d ever been. He spoiled me. He was always bringing me gifts. He loved to spend time with me. I just felt like we clicked.” I glance down at my hands. “But he had two rules. I could never call him or text him, and no one at the hospital could know.”
I swallow hard. “I was young and dumb. I thought he was just worried about the impact on my career. I thought he was divorced.” I shake my head. “The moment I figured out he was still married, I ended it. I never wanted to be the other woman. I applied for a transfer without telling anyone what happened. I was moved within a week, but still, I was naive.”
He reaches for my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “There’s no way you could have known. It’s not your fault.”
“The worst part is that it made me start questioning myself. I can’t trust my own instincts now, not when it comes to relationships.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your instincts,” he says. “You have a big, beautiful heart. Sometimes, manipulative people, when they see that, they can’t resist trying to steal a bit of your light.”
“Well, I feel really stupid,” I swallow hard.
He puts his arms around me and holds me close. “You’re not naive or stupid. You’re incredible. You’re the most special woman in the world.”
I sniff softly. I want to ask him so badly about the letter now. He called me the most special woman in the world, just like whoever wrote the letter.
It seems like too much of a coincidence. But I don’t ask Dalton because I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want my heart to break if he’s not the one who wrote me the letter.
Chapter 9
Dalton
The soft sound of singing pulls me from sleep. I blink open gritty eyes, my body feeling used and exhausted. It’s the same way I feel after an intense day spent working the grounds at the retirement community.
When I glance around, I can’t find the source of the sound. The noise isn’t coming from my alarm clock radio or my phone. It’s coming from my bathroom.
That’s when I remember Bree was here. Bree spent all night at my place, wrapped up in my bed. We alternated between long talks and making love for hours on end before she fell asleep exhausted in my arms.
While I watched her sleep, I wrote her another love letter.
Dear Bree,
You made me smile again today. It wasn’t anything you said or did. It was when you crossed my mind. All I had to do was think about you, and I was smiling.
It’s not something I’m used to. It felt foreign on my face, but you’re waking me up. You’re making me think that this is love. That scares the shit out of me. But lately, I’m thinking maybe some things are worth taking a risk for. If I showed you who I am, would you let me hold you? Touch you? Kiss you?
Sometimes, I look at you and the need to touch you is an ache deep in my bones. I feel like I can’t go one more moment without putting my hands on you, without showing you how much I care.
Would you like that? I’d like to imagine you would. In my fantasies when I reach for your hand, you twine your fingers around mine, and we spend decades just like that, walking through life hand in hand.
We have a day where you walk toward me in white, and I promise you my love in front of the whole world. Because you’re my whole world now. You’re the one I orbit around.
Then one day, not too long after all that white, we’re bringing a little one to the cabin, a tiny girl with your same heart-stealing smile. We’ll introduce her to life and make sure she grows up strong and confident and loved. So very loved.
Centuries will pass, and the historians will talk about how there was never a place where so much love was felt as that tiny cabin where we raised our babies.
That’s the future I see with you. That’s the future I want.
