hauling her against me right as a car honks at her, speeding through the light. She’s so goddamn lucky. What if I wasn’t a good person? What if the man who hurt me came back for her? She’s small. Dainty, even. She could have died. My eyes finally release tears. Not for me, no. For her. This innocent girl. A passerby. Someone who matters.
My eyes shed tears remembering the moment she peered into my eyes, her soulful gray—nearly melted solder—eyes, ones that gave me hope. They reminded me that I’m a fighter. We spent a ton of time together that day, just talking. She told me she’d been studying abroad, I soaked up the info. She sounded American—like me—and she saved my life. One little moment suspended in time gave me a reason to persevere. It threw fate the middle finger. It mooned its ass to the fucker who stole from me. It killed my doubt, filling me with hatred, making me brim with newfound purpose.
The child aspect, though... no matter how it changed me for the better, it didn’t erase the knowledge that no babies on this earth could biologically be mine. Ever. And seeing Toby, watching that hope die, it reminded me all over again of that hopelessness I felt before meeting Gray. He wanted something so mundane and beautiful, something with poetry and prose, something I could never give. He deserves more than that. He deserves a family with kids, a wife who can give them to him, a woman who can offer more than brokenness.
Whether he sees it or not, I can see his barely abated memories. The ones he has nightmares about. The one with a woman named Sparkle. The ones that keep him from falling for me like I’ve inevitably fallen for him.
His boyish charm—annoying as hell at first—caught me off guard in the end, making me spiral into a coma for Tobias Hayes. It warmed me, defrosting the icy exterior, weaving hot new trickles of sweetness around me like a blanket.
I’m falling for him even more.
For real.
And he’s offering me so much in return—everything but his heart.
That kiss we shared before all my past troubles came about seared me like the two-thousand-dollar steaks at Le Grand Oui. Something so soul-burning about the bereft way he allowed me to own it, take it, and not force it from me. It filled me with delicious spurs of hope. Something I haven’t felt since before Paris. It’s more than a crush, more than what I felt for Wes, but less than love. An almost love. An almost hope. An almost future.
I shower, warring with what to do next. My heart tells me to go to our bed and let him hold me. My soul says to bask under the stars and let them guide the way. Yet my body, the most present part of me, begs me to have him eradicate that man from my mind. Replace the moments stolen with ones given and asked for. It wants the patience Toby will give. When we were together at the beginning, it started with our bodies, so why not restart the same?
This time without hatred.
This time with every string attached.
My choice.
His choice.
Our bodies coming as one.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Past
Toby
My feet haven’t moved.
They’re still planted on the carpeted ground of the living room.
The water ran for a half hour, and I listened in silence, beating myself up for pushing. It doesn’t help that all I can do is feel horrible that she got her choices taken away from her. Isn’t that exactly what I did? Take advantage of her in the sense of us both being wasted, having a fucking drive-thru wedding, and then not knowing for weeks?
Guilt wraps around me like barbed wire, slicing me up on the inside while simultaneously marring my heart. It’s times like these, when I’m at my rawest, that Lo forces her way in.
“I’m sorry, Sparkle. I didn’t mean it.” If she can’t hear the sincerity intended, I’ll hate myself.
“You can be sorry all you want, Tobe, but sorry doesn’t mean a damn thing if some change isn’t in your future,” she scolds me, her eyes narrowing to slits. We eat popcorn, watching Dirty Dancing for the fifty-billionth time this month, while she waits for Jase to pay her some attention.
He’s only been in college a year, and he has already abandoned their relationship.
Sports.
Parties.
Excuses.
She acts like it doesn’t bother her, but then she sees the pictures of him uploaded by Ellie and Francis. Like