“Okay, these score you points, I’m not going to lie.” She swallowed, then grinned. “But the real test is yet to come.”
Julien clapped his hands together in show. “I’m ready for it.”
Martha drifted into view. As soon as he laid eyes on her, something shifted inside him. That off feeling that had been hovering around him all week that he couldn’t explain suddenly settled into a feeling of rightness.
She lifted her head, and their gazes connected. A small smile curved her lips. Julien searched her features, looking for any sign to indicate her well-being. Oftheirwell-being. He knew every relationship faced conflict and that it was important to learn how the other person acted in hard times and how they ultimately resolved those differences, both personally and as a couple. He just hated that the strain had come from his own hand and that they were having to face it so early in their relationship.
He reached his hand out, holding his breath and hoping she’d take it without even a second of hesitation. As soon as her dimpled fingers brushed against his palm, his heart felt lighter. He tugged her to him and wrapped her up in his arms.
“I’ve missed you,” he confessed into her hair.
“I’ve missed you too.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
Somewhere in his periphery, he registered Hayley walking away, but he didn’t pay her any attention. Instead, he closed his eyes and breathed Martha in.
“How are you?” he asked. There was so much more meaning to the simple question than the words conveyed on the surface.
Martha seemed to understand what he truly wanted toknow. She leaned back just enough to be able to look up into his face. “I’m okay.”
He searched her eyes, seeking anything that would belie what she was telling him. He wanted her to be truthful with him and not don a mask. Even if that truth was painful. “Are you sure?”
She took a moment to gather her words, her gaze going distant before coming back to land on him again. “I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t hurt or disappointed.” She paused here, the barest of smiles tilting her lips. “But I also think you made the right decision.”
Julien exhaled tension that he must have been holding in his muscles because he sagged into her.
“And I appreciate that you were willing to have a difficult conversation with me. I know that wasn’t easy.” Martha rubbed his back.
His head dipped until his forehead rested against hers. “It wasn’t, but only because I knew what I had to say was going to cause you pain, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“That’s life though, isn’t it? No one comes out unscathed. And, unfortunately, I doubt this is the last time either one of us will hurt the other, no matter how unintentionally it happens. Happily-ever-after isn’t the destination. It’s the journey.”
Julien nuzzled his nose against Martha’s, his hands splaying along her spine as he pressed her body more firmly into his. “I like the sound of that.”
“What?” she breathed out, the warmth fanning along his lips.
“Happily-ever-after.” He pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her like he’d been longing to do all those hours he’d been cooped up in his office, dreaming of her in his arms like this.
A throat cleared nearby. “We’re ready to eat and start the game if you two can pry yourselves away from each other.” Hayley smirked at them, then sauntered back out of the entryway.
Martha took a step back, licking her lips. Pink stained her cheeks. “We should probably...” She grabbed his hand, turned on her heel, then led him into the open-concept dining/living room area.
A smorgasbord of food covered the dining room table. There was a vegetable tray, an assortment of chips and dips, sliders, chicken wings, and his pink box of macarons at the end.
“Hayley is serious about game nights,” said a fully tattooed man Julien had yet to meet. The man held out his hand. “I’m Tai, Hayley’s cousin.”
“Julien.”
“I suppose we should do introductions, shouldn’t we?” Hayley pointed to the woman with the head tattoo that he’d met a few weeks ago at the library. “This is Evangeline. She also works at the library and is Tai’s other half. That hulking specimen of a man over there”—she gestured to a very tall man in a flannel shirt sitting on one end of a sectional sofa—“is my boyfriend, Levi. And there are three kittens hiding around here somewhere, but I doubt they’ll come out.”
“It’s nice to meet everyone.”
With introductions out of the way, they all stacked their plates with food and returned to the sofa in pairs.
Hayley wiped her fingers with a napkin after finishing off a slider. “I thought tonight we could play Taboo.” She reached under the coffee table and produced the game box.
Tai groaned. “I call unfair advantage.”
“Unlike last time when we played Pictionary?” She raised her brow at him.
