25
Rhys
Could use a pickup.
The text comes in while I’m standing in front of a display of luggage, trying to decide between a hard-shell suitcase and a—much cheaper—cloth duffel.
Okay,I tell myself when I see her message.That’s good, right? She didn’t get into the car with him. They’re not about to start a road trip home together.
Except that’sbad. Bad for Hanna, bad for Hott Springs Eternal, bad for my family.
And yet I can’t stop the Christmas-morning feeling bubbling up inside me.
She didn’t get into the car with him.
She’s not with him.
She’s probably torn up and grieving, though. She’s probably finally dealing with the feelings she’s been suppressing for the last few days.
I squash the kernel of hope that wants to form around the other possibility. The possibility that Eden told him to go to hell.
Even if she did, that doesn’t mean…
It doesn’t fucking mean anything. She got jiltedtwo days ago. On top of which, she’s had two serious relationships blow up, hard, in two years. She’s doesn’t want?—
What? What would you be offering her anyway?
Whatcanyou offer her?
She owns a quilt shop in Rush Creek. She sees the best in everything and everyone.
You’re New York City’s sharkiest divorce attorney. You don’t believe relationships stand a chance.
It’s not like you’ve changed your mind about that. Especially not after what you saw her fiancé do to her.
You don’t want to do that to her.
I grab the hard-shell suitcase—more protection for the quilts she loves, less chance of them getting wet or of something leaking onto them in the cargo bay—and check out as fast as I can.
When I get back to Grace’s house, it’s just her on the sidewalk. Paul and the blue sedan are gone. Eden is wearing her backpack on one shoulder. She looks exhausted. And she’s still utterly, perfectly beautiful.
“Hi,” she says and slides into the passenger seat.
“Hi.”
“Can we go home?”
I don’t ask what she means byhomeor what happened. She’ll tell me when she’s ready. “Yeah,” I say instead. “We can go home.”
“We’ll need tickets.”
I pull out my phone to oblige, but I haven’t even typed our departure and arrival airports into Google when she says, “Why are you here? Still here. With me.”
If I knew the answer to that…
But Idoknow the answer. In the beginning, it was because I owed it to her. Then it was because I owed it to Hanna.
But today? Now?
