We stood there in silence, the distant sound of the ocean crashing through the open balcony door.
He put a hand to my arm. “Kris?” He tipped his head to catch my eyes. “Will you play for me? Please? One last time?”
One last time.
So this was it. Our goodbye.
This was how it started, and this was how it would come to an end. Me, sitting on a piano bench while he watched me play. It was a fitting finale. I was glad we had it. Glad that he’d come and we’d said the things we needed to say. It was better this way.
I looked at him a moment. “All right, Tyler. One last time.”
I took a seat, placing my fingers on the keys. A cool, salty ocean breeze rolled through the drapes, and I drew it deep into my lungs and began.
My mind disappeared into itself. I didn’t feel Tyler sit next to me, and I couldn’t tell you what music my fingers chose, or how long I played. Fifteen years of muscle memory made all the decisions.
When it ended, it felt like coming out of a dream. I put my hands in my lap and found Tyler sitting next to me, smiling gently, his eyes teary.
Then a hand came up under my jaw, and he was kissing me.
It was soft and careful, a closed-mouthed exploration. But it drew me up into him like a warm breeze lifting a kite. My arms found their way around his neck, and the memory of the shape of his mouth and the feel of his lips filled in the places that used to hold question marks and dark corners.
Yes, I remembered him. I remembered us.
But he wasn’t Josh.
The scruff of his beard felt wrong. He was too tall. And while my heart pounded, it didn’t reach out for him.
Maybe once, this would have been enough. I might have even mistaken this feeling for love.
But now I knew better.
He pulled away, a hand still cupping my cheek, and I looked at him, despair pouring over me.
This is as good as it will ever be.
If Tyler couldn’t eclipse Josh, nobody could. And it made me start to cry because the whole fucking thing was completely and utterly hopeless.
His thumb moved along my jaw, and his eyes blinked back tears. He probably thought I was moved by the kiss. I guess I was. But not in his direction.
“I love you, Kris. I’m always going to love you,” he whispered. “Please forgive me.”
I looked away from him, wiping a tear from my cheek. “I can forgive you if you can forgive me back.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pressed his cheek to the side of my head.
Our embrace was full of loss and regrets and what-ifs.
Tyler was a version of my life. A path I could have taken. But now I was so far off course I didn’t even know where I was going anymore. All I knew was I was headed for a dead end.
And when I got there, I’d be alone.
“Kristen, have you ever heard of the red thread of fate?” Tyler said over me.
“No.” I sniffled.
He turned me until I sat facing him.
“I’ve been studying Mandarin,” he said, speaking to my eyes. “Learning a lot about the Chinese culture. And there was a story I read that really resonated with me.”
He reached out and tenderly wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “In Chinese legend, two lovers are connected by an invisible red thread around their pinky fingers. The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers from birth, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. The cord might stretch or tangle, but it can never break.”
His eyes moved back and forth between mine.
“You are on the other end of my thread, Kris. No matter how far apart we are, you’re tied to me. I stretched us and I tangled us and I’m sorry. But I didn’t break us, Kris. We’re still connected.”
He paused. That pause that he always did on the phone, the one that told me he was about to tell me the good part.
Then he pulled a tiny, black velvet box from his pocket and opened the lid.
My heart stopped dead. Oh my God.
“Marry me.”
TWENTY-THREE
Josh
I finished the last order Kristen had for me, but I stayed. I wanted to be there when she got home.
I wanted to see that she did come home.
The waiting was physically painful. My chest hurt like a bear trap was clamped