“I want to try that,” I say. “Being honest. Talking about the things that are difficult. When I hide them—they seem to come out in other ways, anyway.”
He moves, his body turning on the bench so we’re facing each other more. He looks between us, where my hands have been idly toying with the strap of my bag.
And then he reaches out and takes one, pressing our palms together and linking our fingers, the same as he did last night. I close my eyes at the feel of it.
He’ll protect you.
“Okay,” he says.
“I have three points.” I wince at how it sounds, this first attempt at saying what I mean. A little loud and slightly stiff, as though I’m about to start up a slideshow titled “Difficult Relationship Factors We Need to Address.” Practicing for this in the mirror wouldn’t have been the worst thing, if only six-foot-something of the man I’m trying to talk to hadn’t been sleeping on my couch all night.
Reid smiles crookedly. “Three, huh?”
I smile back. “Three. This is a numbers game, Sutherland.”
“Oh,” he says softly, still smiling thatswoonsh. “My specialty.”
Myspecialty today. I’ve thought and thought about them, as if they were letters on a page: the order in which I’d say them. How I could make them strong enough, special enough, straightforward enough for Reid.
“One,” I say, knowing his smile is about to disappear. “What you said last night, about your skin—”
He tries to preempt me. “I’m not embarrassed by it. I’ve had it for a long time. Obviously I’d prefer if I didn’t, and I’d certainly prefer if you didn’t find it un—”
“I don’t find it anything except part of you. It’s only number one because you said it gets worse when you’re stressed, and your job—it always seems stressful to you. I see how you get, whenever it comes up. And if that’s part of why things were so off with us last week, then I want to know about it.”
Reid looks up from where our hands are joined, his eyes out on the wide expanse of park green as he answers me.
“My work is . . . stressful. Especially lately. When I came to see you last week, I’d had a particularly terrible day. When I looked back at it, afterward . . . I realized I should’ve passed on your invitation, gone home alone.” He looks back at me, rubs his thumb over the back of my hand in a way that makes me shift on the bench, an inconvenient pulse of feeling between my legs.
“But I wanted to be around you. You’re the only person here who doesn’t treat me like I’m a calculator. When I’m around you, I don’t think about numbers. It’s a relief.”
“And here I am with my numbers game,” I tease, but I also use my own thumb to stroke his hand back, sorry for the stress he feels about his job. Honored that I’m as much a relief to him as he’s been for me.
He smiles down at our hands. “I don’t mind this one. What’s two?”
Two is a hard one. I swallow.
“Two is—Avery. You, and Avery, and the wedding program.” I watch his face, search for some grimace or sadness, something that’ll give me an indication of how this one will go. “If you still hold it against me, Reid, it doesn’t matter how much you may like me now. It doesn’t matter how much we like each other. If you don’t forgive me for those letters, and if you still have feelings for her—”
“I don’t. I mean that I don’t hold it against you. And I don’t still have feelings for her. Please, let me make this clear to you.”
“Okay,” I say, because that is not going to be enough. I remember the way he’s looked, sometimes, when she comes up. I remember the way he’d said she was beautiful, and powerful. “Make it clear.”
He clears his throat. “Avery’s father arranged for us to meet after she had been through a difficult time. A breakup with someone she’d been with since college, who had some problems with . . . ah, substances.”
“Oh.”
“I think he thought I’d be a good choice. Stable. Boring, probably.” Reid gives a lift of one shoulder. “I thought being with her would help me find my way here, in some way. And I think she thought being with me would be easier. Undemanding, and . . . calm. But we were a terrible match, and we both knew it. For much longer than either of us was willing to admit.”
“But you bought her that ring,” I say, which isridiculous. But it’s the first time since he came back to the shop that Reid and I have had any meaningful conversation about him and Avery, about what happened between them. My memories of her, of them together, are shaped by that ring, by what it represented.
“That was not the ring I bought her, actually.”
“What?”
“A week after we got engaged she came to a dinner we had planned with the new one. A gift for the two of us, from her father. An upgrade.”
“Ouch,” I say, grimacing, and he chuckles softly.
