The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,83

I’ve ever loved. I want to feel your skin against mine, to be reminded how beautiful making love can be when you’re with someone who you want to absorb into your very being because the thought of ever being without them fills you with sense of despair so complete, so bottomless, that you’re sure you’ll never smile, or laugh, or feel whole again. I’m willing to risk my family, my sanity, my sobriety because I fucking love you. You say you’re risking your heart, but you aren’t. Not when you have someone waiting for you. Someone who gets you. I don’t have that. I’ve never had that, and if I lose you, when I lose you, I never will. So don’t talk to me about fucking risk.” Sophie took her purse off the back of her chair and draped it across her body. “You don’t want to fuck me? I’ll find someone who does. Enjoy your kolaches.”

It took a moment for my mind to catch up with my emotions. Sophie was out of the kitchen and heading for the front door.

“Sophie, wait.” I lunged after her and was stopped at the door of the kitchen when Sophie pulled me into her arms, her mouth finding its way home to mine.

twenty-one

sophie

“When do you have to be back?” Nora’s voice was lazy, her words almost slurred, and I felt a little arrogant in the knowledge it was because of me.

“Noonish. What time is it?”

She reached over me, her bare skin sliding across mine, and woke her phone. “Eleven hundred.”

I kissed her and got out of bed.

“Where are you going?”

“To buy us more time.”

I walked down the hall naked as the day I was born, picked up my purse from the couch where I’d flung it on our way to the bedroom. I texted Charlie and Logan.

Going to brunch with Todd & Ivey. I’ll text when I’m on my way home.

I hesitated before I hit Send. Lying to Charlie didn’t bother me. He’d been cheating on me and lying to me for years. Lying to Logan was another story, especially after the promise I made to her only days before. I removed her name from the text and hoped she wouldn’t question me too deeply about my morning.

I followed our clothes back to Nora’s bedroom, discarded on the floor like a trail of breadcrumbs left to find your way home. I stopped before I got to her door. I was home. Nora was my home. I took a shaky breath, terrified and thrilled at the same time. I couldn’t go back to the life I had before, but I didn’t know how to go forward either. I pushed the fear of the future to the back of my mind, determined to take full advantage of the time we had now.

I pulled a book out and dropped my purse on the floor. “We have another hour.”

“Gosh, whatever will we find to do?”

“I have something for you.” I held the book out to Nora.

She grinned. “Persuasion. You kept this all this time?”

I sat down on the bed next to her. “It was the only thing I had of you.”

She opened the book to the photo of the two of us.

“And that photo,” I said.

“It looks like it’s been through the wringer.”

“You have no idea. Here.” I took the book from her and flipped to the end. “This is my favorite part.”

“You’ve read Persuasion? On your own.”

“Yes, multiple times. Now, I’ve read a couple of Austen’s novels. Pride and Prejudice.”

“Everyone’s read that.”

“Emma. I love her.”

“She reminds me of you. ‘Sophie Russell, handsome, clever and rich...’”

“You think I’m clever?”

“Definitely handsome and rich.”

“Ha ha. Well, Persuasion is my favorite, and this is why. ‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again, with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight and a half years ago.’” I closed the book. “Every time I read that, it gave me hope.”

Nora took my hand and kissed it.

“I would drink when I heard of you, but when I sobered up, I would read this book, and fool myself into thinking we could have this happy ending.”

“We may yet,” Nora said. She pulled me down into a soft and languid kiss, as if we had all the time in the world. “I dream about your lips.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s true. Remember how we would kiss for hours, and