Page 336 of Safe With You

And I was.

It didn’t take me several minutes to decide. I didn’t have to search myself for some hidden feeling that might prove otherwise.

“He caught me off guard,” I admitted. “Hearing his name after all this time was weird.”

“I can imagine.”

“But I’m okay.”

“All right.”

For a few seconds, all I heard was the low hum of the road beneath my tires.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to finish these edits.”

“Trying?”

“Mila decided she needed water three times before she went to sleep.”

I smiled. “Maybe she was thirsty.”

“She wasn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I watched her take one sip and put the glass down.”

“That was still a sip.”

“Luna.”

I laughed as I turned onto the next street. “I’m just saying.”

“She also needed me to check under her bed.”

“For monsters?”

“For a sock.”

“A sock?”

“She lost it yesterday.”

The conversation moved on without either of us making a decision for it to. He told me about the edits he was trying to finish, and I told him about Naomi nearly ordering twice as many copies of a new release as we had space to display because she insisted they’d sell. Somewhere in between, Ellis asked what time I was going into the store tomorrow, and I told him earlier than I wanted to.

Normal things.

By the time I turned onto my street, Lucas’s name hadn’t come up again.

I noticed that more than I expected to.

Not because I was trying not to think about him. That was what felt different. There wasn’t anything I had to push away or talk myself out of. Mama told me he reached out, I let myself feel whatever came with hearing that, and now I was driving home talking to Ellis about whether Mila actually lost a sock or hid it somewhere and forgot.

My life kept moving.

So did I.