“Why wouldn’t you?” Ari shrugged, trying to alleviate the knot of pain growing in her stomach. “Why would things have changed?”
Tom made no reply, exhaling heavily.
“She’s beautiful,” Ari added, through a throat that was now thick and dry. “Very beautiful. Like that old queen of diamonds card you used to have.”
When she looked back at Tom, he was staring at his hands with empty eyes.
“Right,” Tom said blankly. “Right.”
Suddenly, Ari felt overwhelmed with sadness. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calibrate her racing thoughts.
“Did you mean it?” she asked.
“What?”
Ari swallowed. “About wanting joint custody?”
“Not really. I wouldn’t do that to you.” He sounded tired. “Reine’s yours. I know that. I just... I just want to get to know her. I meant what I said earlier, Ari. I want to be her father. But only under your terms, okay? Without lawyers and contracts and... and mymothersticking her damn nose in.”
“Okay,” Ari felt herself relax. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Tom carried on. “I’ll be sorry for that every day for the rest of my life. Even if you believe nothing else I ever say again, please believe that.”
He sounded so miserable that Ari knew he was telling the truth. Hewassorry. “Come on,” she heard herself say, feeling her body stand, surprised by her own actions. “Come with me.”
Tom looked up at her. “What? Where?”
She reached down and took one of his hands, which was still clenched into a tight fist. As she wrapped her palm around his strained muscles, she felt it relax, and his fingers linked with hers as easily as they had ever done. There was something in this, Ari knew, but she ignored the feeling, just as she ignored the spark that went through her at the touch of his skin.
“Just come with me,” she said. “Please.”
* * *
As Ari led him away from the house and towards the woods, Tom felt his heart racing happily. He didn’t stop to ask where she was taking him and why. For all he knew, she could have been leading him into the forest where Luis and Sebastian were lying in wait, ready to murder him for deserting her. He probably deserved it, to be fair. He didn’t dare ask her where they were going, or why. All he knew was that Ari was here and willingly holding his hand and wanting to spend time with him, and he knew better than to open his mouth and ruin the moment. Something had shifted between them, and Tom felt hope raising its head. Maybe they could move on from here, he thought to himself. Maybe there was a way forward from this.
As they entered the woods, Tom glanced up at the grey sky. It was dark and foreboding, a little like the tortured workings of his mind.
“Will it rain, do you think?” he asked. The words were so innocuous, so pathetically every day, that he winced as soon as they were spoken.
This was Ari, and he was talking about the fuckingweather?
Ari, to his surprise, only laughed. It was a sound he hadn’t heard in eight years, and his heart pulsed painfully at the noise.
“Maybe,” she remarked, looking up. “I haven’t had a single sunny day at this place, you know. I’m sure it’s beautiful when the sun shines, but honestly, on days like this...” she gestured to the forbidding outline of the house behind them “. . . I don’t know how you bear it.”
Tom shrugged back. “I’m not normally here. I live in the city.”
“Yes,” Ari answered, and her tone had changed. “With Sasha.”
Tom instinctively knew he needed to change the subject. Sasha, like Tom Miller, were topics that made the smile fall from Ari’s lips and her voice go from honey to ice.
“I used to play in these woods when I was a kid,” he offered quickly. “My mom was always working, and my dad had his cars and planes. I would play out here, waiting for them to have time for me.”
At that, Ari looked at him. “That’s awful.”
“No,” Tom shook his head. “I was a quiet kid. The trees suited me.”
“Reine can be quiet,” Ari admitted. “I worry about how quiet she is sometimes.”
