was nothing,” she says softly. Was it? The game is about to end, and she’s saying nothing? “I was just saying it’s crazy that we’re almost at the end.”
“Yeah.” I tighten my hand on the steering wheel and upshift. I can’t take it anymore. “What are we going to do? At the end?”
She blinks. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if we win. What do you want to tell them?”
She shakes her head. “I think we need to concentrate on beating Ace and Marta first. We can cross that bridge when we come to it. Don’t you think?”
“No. Even if we don’t win. What do you want to do?”
She’s wrinkling her nose. “You mean . . . what? Do you mean do I want to stay married to you?”
When she says it like that, it sounds as fucking batshit as it sounded the first day it was brought up back in Atlanta. It’s just why I’ve been keeping her at arm’s length this whole time and didn’t take her when I desperately wanted to.
She’s too fucking good for me. She deserves so much more.
“I’m just making sure we’re on the same page.” My voice is stiff. “That’s all.”
“Um . . . ,” she says softly, staring straight ahead. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
Holy fuck. Is she . . . seriously considering it?
I laugh. “What would people say? If we actually said we wanted to stay married?”
She shrugs. “What difference does it make? Fuck ’em. Right?”
“Right,” I say. “We should just do it.”
“Yes. We should.”
Holy shit.
Did we just agree on what I think we agreed on?
A car’s coming at me head-on, so I have to swerve. Penny grabs the door handle, and I get us back onto the road, then pull over at the first chance I get. “Come here,” I murmur, sliding my hands around her back and pulling her over the console toward me. I slam my mouth onto hers and kiss her. I trace the outline of her lips, which are still red and swollen from the thousands of kisses I’ve given her in the past few days. “This is insane, you know that?”
She nods and sighs with total contentment, entwining my hand with hers and lifting them to gaze at the two fake rings, small and large, touching in our joined hands. “Luke . . .”
“Yeah?” I nuzzle her neck, lost in the smell of her and the feel of her and the overpowering need for her. I’m ready to go and be her husband and make her the happiest wife on the planet.
“I’d love to go on a honeymoon with you. So let’s go win this race.”
I laugh. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
I let go of her and pull out onto the road again, never releasing her hand, and we make it down to the aquarium. As we descend the hill, we see it. A small crowd of onlookers, as well as the cameramen and the flags for the Million Dollar Marriage show. They’re waiting for us and start to cheer as we pull into the lot.
It’s the end of the line.
As we near the platform, I see Ace and Marta standing in a large square. At first I think they’ve got us beaten.
But then I realize Marta’s frantically directing Ace, who’s moving colored cinder blocks into a line. They stop and throw up their hands. Will Wang runs over to them and says, “Sorry, but that is incorrect . . . again!”
They haven’t won this thing yet. We coast to a stop at the edge of the lot. “Come on,” I shout to Penny as we climb out and run through the crowd.
Will comes over to us and leads us to our own square. I see the colored cinder blocks, ready for us to line up.
“Your next chore is simple—and the final task of the race,” he says. “Arrange these cinder blocks in order of the color of the flag at each of your previous check-ins.”
Oh fuck.
There were flags at the check-ins?
I rake my hands through my hair and crouch down, thinking we’re fucked. Who the fuck could remember all that?
But Penny, very quietly and methodically, is studying the colored blocks. She taps on the green one. “Luke. Can you help me?”
I stare at her. “Wait. You know?”
Then I remember who I’m talking to. This is Penelope Carpenter, who, among all the millions of other things she is, has a fucking huge brain in that head of hers, with an insanely good memory.
She. Knows.