“Cash purchase, with properly incentivized attorneys… four weeks.”
I can wait four weeks.
“It feels permanent,” Alex murmurs, half to himself.
“Is that all right?”
He glances at me, then pulls off the road again. We’ve driven barely a mile. This time, he takes a hand. It’s my left hand, and his fingers find my engagement ring. “I know we don’t know anyone here, but do you think we should get married on the veranda of that house?”
The tears I blinked back earlier now return with a vengeance, spilling down my cheeks, and I’m across the center console, wrapping him in my arms, his mouth finding mine.
It’s only later when I consider Carol won’t be there, and the tears come again.
Thirty-Seven
Vicky
“He’s not like I thought he would be,” Kirsten muses as she buttons up the back of my wedding dress.
“How so?”
I think Alex has changed—or mellowed, perhaps. Yes, that’s the better word. He’s still Alex, just less intense.
These last few weeks have been carefullynormal. Normal routine, normal conversations, normal sex. Alex working very hard to be normal, and not even working very hard. He’s spent hours with me, being normal.
“He’s…” Kirsten pauses, and I check in the mirror before me. Her expression is thoughtful, but whether the source is a particularly fiddly button or the loss of the right word to describe Alex, I can’t be sure. “…kind,” she says at last.
Her choice of word surprises me. Not because it’s wrong—I suppose—but because it’s howshesees him.
Prior to her and Chris’s arrival in Spain, Kirsten had met Alex the grand total of once: on her doorstep, when he came to Miami. To retrieve me. Which wasn’t Alex being ‘kind.’
“Is that good?” I ask.
“Oh, yes. Kind is always good.” She tugs the sides again. “Three more. Breathe out.”
The dress is tight, the bodice tighter, but I like its lacy finish and the way the skirts fall loose from the waist. My hair and makeup are already done, courtesy of a professional Alex hired, and the woman in my mirror looks very beautiful, slightly ethereal, and thoughtful.
I’m not sure kind is always good. “Is kind boring?”
“Kind is neither boring nor interesting,” Kirsten replies. “Kind is kind.”
Difficult to argue with. “And Alex?”
Her fingers pause. “Are you asking me if your fiancé isboringeighteen minutes before you marry him?”
Possibly.
“Just interested in your first impressions.”
“He’s…” Her frown reappears in the mirror, deeper than before. I don’t think she knows I can see it. “…steady.”
That meansboring.
It’s worse than I thought.
Alex hasn’tmellowed, he’s shaped himself to what he thinks I want him to be. He’s given me everything I’ve always wanted—his presence, a safe place, hislove. And he’s taking nothing of whathewants.
Why is he still here?
