“What would you have done, if I’d gotten on that bus?” she asked, her voice skipping across the wet pavement like a pebble.
He lifted a shoulder. “I would’ve driven home to feed Waffle.”
“What a waste of a night.”
“I got to see your face. Best night I’ve had in weeks.”
She tried to look embarrassed for him, but it wasn’t convincing. Her smile was too wide. “You’ve got lines, Hodges. Did you spend all this time on the side of the curb thinking that one up?”
He tilted his head up to the dark sky, like she was simply too much. “Are you letting me drive you home, or what?”
She walked across the street and let him open the passengerdoor for her. She accepted his hand, sparks flying between their fingers as he guided her onto the passenger seat.
“You’re still wearing your ring,” he observed.
“I don’t like taking it off,” she responded, feeling every ounce of the painful honesty in her words.
“Me neither,” he said back, a glint of a smile.
He didn’t make a move for the driver’s side. He stood in her open door, looking down at her like he might never see her in the moonlight like this again.
She looked down at their woven fingers. “You loved me when we went to the Shell Station? That was the moment?”
“It wasn’t one moment; it was hundreds of moments that all led up to me looking at you in the sunset and wondering how I was going to cope now that I’d fallen for my wife.”
Warmth cascaded and pooled beneath her breastbone like spilled bottles of acrylic paint. She felt hot and bright and messy and heartbreakingly honest.
She’d always believed the things he’d said, and she believed him now more than ever, because Elliot had sped through town to get someone Lainey loved to the hospital. Just as he’d sped down the interstate to get to her. Then he’d stood outside for hours, waiting for a single look.
That was the kind of person Elliot was: steadfast and sure. Dependable. He remembered everything and was bad at lying. He loved hard and fell fast and was someone who showed up for the people who mattered to him, again and again. And Lainey mattered. Full stop.
She could probably list a hundred more things, but it would hardly scratch the surface of why she was in love with him, too.
His eyes flicked to hers, no doubt seeing everything in a single glance.
“Elliot, why couldn’t you have told me about the contract terms right then?”
“I won’t make excuses, only say that I wish I had.”
He reached his arms over her knees and pulled open the glove compartment with a soft click. Folded papers fell open on her lap. On the front page, she saw her name. And Elliot’s name. Her address. And—
“I was going to mail that to you today,” he explained. “But then Bree requested a ride to the hospital, and then the day kind of got away from me.”
“What is this?” she asked.
He placed an arm on the roof and leaned into the opening of the passenger door. “It’s apostnuptial agreement. This document makes it very clear that I have no current or future claim to your home. And I’m signing over the surrounding three acres to you, effective immediately, so you can sell it to whoever you want for way more than I could ever hope to pay. You’ll have plenty of money. You’ll be able to afford good health care here, or start a new life anywhere. France. Sweden. Australia. Wherever. And you can divorce me, if that’s what you want.”
“Is that whatyouwant?”
He tipped his face closer and simply looked at her. Though it wasn’t very simple at all. His eyes were staring straight into her bones, so intense, so…hopeless. “I want you to have everything you want.”
She blinked away the tears burning at the corners of her eyes. “God, I’m so mad at you,” she confessed through a wet laugh.
“I know,” he replied. His voice had this dreadfully melancholy way about it that she could hardly stand.
She shook her head. “You don’t get it at all. Because what I want is to stop missing you.” Tears streamed down her face. “Iwant to be excited that I finally have a way out. You know, you’ve basically ruined traveling for me now, because if I ever see the Eiffel Tower, or the Sydney Opera House, or…I don’t actually know what’s in Sweden…whatever it has, I’ll hate it because you won’t be with me.”
She fisted his shirt by the collar and tugged him down to her level. His dark eyes locked with hers like he was scared that if he looked away, even for a moment, she would disappear. “You were right about me. I wanted it both ways with us—the safety of this commitment without ever really letting my guard down. I couldn’t imagine a world in which someone I loved as much as I love you could love me back.”
