“They’re all still on the table,” Rhys says. “Just say the word. The reason I decided not to do any of those is becauseI get it. I get why you don’t want to jump into this and why you can’t trust it. You’ve been dealt a shit hand. No one you’ve ever cared about has stayed, and the one person who did wasn’t exactly warm and loving to you. I wouldn’t be able to trust me, either. And here’s the thing: I want you to be safe, which means I don’twantyou to just trust whatever performative alpha male bullshit I dish up for you. I don’t want to fly you to Paris and give you a huge rock and tell you I’ll never leave you, because I don’t want to seduce you. I want todeserveyou.”
Ialmostmake a little helpless noise, because holyshit, he’s good. Like, I had NO IDEA he was that good. I feel lucky he didn’t use the closing-argument magic on me sooner because I would have folded like a fat quarter on display.
Instead I shorten up Milo’s leash, stand up, take a deep breath, and wrap my armor tighter around myself.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says. “I’m not asking you to say anything or promise anything. You don’t even have to agree to see me ever again. I just wanted to tell you that I took a job at my friend Matias’s law firm in Bend and I’ll be working there as soon as I wrap things up in New York. The events of the last few weeks have made me realize I don’t love who I’ve become, and I want to feel like I can look myself in the eye in the mirror. Plus, three thousand miles is a long way to come once a week for family dinners.”
I snort at that.
“I guess what I’m saying is that I’m here and I’m not leaving.”
I want so many things. I want to take off the armor and wrap him around me instead. I want to let him in, all the way in, and keep him there as long as he’ll stay.
I want it to be like it was in the car, just us, moving forward together.
And on the other hand, I want never to have gotten in that car and discovered that it was possible to love so much more deeply than I’d ever loved before. That it was possible to want someone so fiercely that any loss I’d ever experienced would pale in comparison to how much it would hurt to lose him.
“If I tell you to leave, will you?” I ask.
I see the hit register, a sudden flash of pain behind his eyes, but he does an admirable job of shuttering them. “If you tell me to leave you alone, I’ll stay away. But I’m in Rush Creek to stay, Eden. I’m here for the long haul.”
Our eyes are locked on each other’s faces. There’s quiet resignation on his as he waits for my verdict.
I don’t know what’s on mine. I hope I’m not as transparent as I feel—terrified and hopeful at the same time.
51
Eden
“What did you tell him?” Mari demands, crouching to love up Milo, who treats her to all the nose licking and face panting.
“I didn’t tell him to leave me alone,” I admit. “I couldn’t. I opened my mouth and closed it. Like a fish. But I couldn’t get the words out. After a while he said, ‘Okay. I’m going to take that as good news for now. See you around?’ and then he kind of laughed and said, ‘I actually do have to leave the store. But just the store, okay? I’m still here.’ And he went out.”
“Aw,” she says.
I don’t admit how much I’d wanted to grab his arm and keep him here—in the store—a few minutes more. But also how much I wanted to tell him to take his certainty and his commitment and shove them, because I’d seen them before, and they hadn’t done me any good at all.
“I wish I’d told him to leave me alone,” I say.
Milo tilts his shaggy head, resting it against my leg.
“Do you really?”
I bite my lip. “No. But I wish I’d wanted to tell him to. I wish I didn’t…likehim so much.”
I wish I didn’t love him.
Mari tilts her head, considering. “This reminds me of how it was with Kane and me,” she says. “I was pregnant with Zara, and I didn’t know whether I should raise her, because I didn’t feel like I had any idea how to be a good mom. My own mom had been such a disaster, and I was a hot mess. But I had good people in my life, and they were all telling me, basically, that I didn’t have to figure out the rest of my life. I just had to figure out that day, and if I stayed that day, and the next day, at some point it would start to make more sense.”
“And did it?”
She nods. “Yeah. One day I realized I’d stayed more than a year and that it had been months since I’d thought about leaving.”
“But I’m not the one who needs to stay,” I say. “He’s the one?—”
She nods. “But he’s asking you to want him to, right? He’s telling you he’ll leave you alone if you want him to, but what he really wants is for you to want him to stay. So that’s the question you get to ask each day. Do I want him to stay today? Should I tell him to leave me alone? Today it seems like you didn’t want to tell him to. Maybe tomorrow you won’t want to, either. Or maybe you will, and that’s okay, too. But I think it’s pretty cool that he recognizes that you’ve been hurt badly enough that the only thing that will help is seeing him stay and stay and stay.”
“What if he can’t stay…forever?” I ask.
