It’s a lazy, slow summer day. A perfect day. I can’t imagine a better one anywhere else, with anyone else.
For dinner, Walker handles the steak and potatoes and I make a salad with the last of the summer tomatoes, and afterwards Jonah announces he’s going outside to collect ladybugs.
Walker pours two glasses of wine and we take them to the porch swing. His arm comes around my shoulder and I tuck in against his side.
We sit in the last of the evening light, watching Jonah on his bug hunt.
“You should get a dog,” I say wistfully. “I always dreamed of having a dog.”
A smile curves his lips. “Then let’s get a dog.”
There’s a silence.
Eyes still on Jonah, he murmurs, “Inmydreams, we make him a little brother or sister to play with too. Maybe even more than one, when I’m feeling especially greedy.”
Suddenly, my heart feels like it’s airborne.
“Walker,” I say softly.
“It's okay.” His fingers stroke down my bare shoulder. “You don't have to say anything. I just…” He takes a breath. “Can I tell you something without you thinking I'm trying to pressure you?”
“Tell me,” I say. No hesitation.
Ask me to stay,I think.Ask me to stay so I have a reason not to get on that plane.
He looks out at the land. The little barn he built while Jonah and I drank lemonade and watched him work. At the hay bales stacked up where he rescued me from a gopher snake and called me his princess.
Then he looks back at me.
“I want to ask you to stay here, Sadie.”
I stare at him. Terrified and hopeful all at once.
So ask the question. Give me the choice. Give me the chance to say yes.
“And the only reason I haven’t,” he continues, “is because I keep thinking… what if you do?”
I blink. “I don’t understand.”
“What if you stay? And the summer ends and real life starts grinding on, the way it does. And one day you look up and realize you made a massive life decision when you were soyoung, in your very first relationship, and it wasn’t the right decision.” His voice drops. “I don’t want to be the thing you regret.”
I think about the vow I made. The dream I’ve held for so long in my heart. And I look at the man sitting next to me and the boy playing in the tall grass and the mountains I’ve known all my life.
This feels like a dream too.
“I would never regret you,” I tell him fiercely. “I would never regret choosing this life.”
“But you'll always wonder about the path you didn't take. About the life you worked for but didn’t pick.” He picks up my hand, holds it in both of his, his thumb tracing across my knuckles. “You deserve to have long weekends with no agenda. To get see the world and get lost and discover new treasures. To be young in all the ways you never got to be. So just wander down that other path awhile. And if you decide to come back to me, I'll be here waiting for you.”
I let out a breath.
He didn’t ask.
I understand why he didn't. I've understood for a long time. Sometimes people build walls around themselves.
He was right to call me young and inexperienced. To say I didn’t know any better. I really was naive to think that a single summer would be enough to dismantle every defense Walker has ever built around himself.
So I just wrap my arms around him. This complicated man with an artist’s soul and huge heart who’s so strong in every way except letting someone love him, because then they can hurt him.
