softer now. “It’d always felt like a dream, thinking I’d one day get to ask you to be my wife, but now that I can touch it, picture it, and believe in myself, I had to ask. I had to.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, lowering my head to his chest. “I love you, I do, but—”
“Shhh.” He kissed my forehead. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t. I could hear it in the strain of his voice and feel it in the thundering of his heart against my cheek. “Take your time.”
A knock sounded on my door; Mom’s voice hesitant on the other side. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, we’re okay.” Though there wasn’t a trace of conviction in Everett’s answer.
We arrived home the day after Christmas, and although Everett doted on me and smiled and laughed at all the right times with the family, my non-answer plagued him.
It was in the shadows that swept across his eyes, turning the vibrant hue of green a shade darker. I wanted to erase it—the anxiety, the hurt, and the disappointment.
I wanted to, but I didn’t.
“Darling,” Sabrina said two days before the new year would arrive. We were inundated with orders for parties, weddings, funerals, and the list went on. “You should be sitting while you’re doing that.”
She dragged the stool over, and I thanked her as I sat and finished tying off the stems.
“You look like you’re either about to go into labor or jump off a cliff.”
I snorted, then coughed, then groaned. “Everett asked me to marry him.”
Gloria’s head peeked out above the cupboard on the other side of the counter. “Say what?”
Sabrina’s gaze was heavy as if she was trying to peel back my skin to look inside my muddled brain. “You didn’t answer him.”
Gloria gasped. “Oh, boy.”
“He left me. Again. While I was pregnant, mind you,” I grumbled, tossing the knife down. “Seems like everyone but me is ready to forget about that.”
“We’re not the ones in love with the guy,” Sabrina said. “Grudges, betrayal—they burn longer and brighter, and can last a lifetime where love is concerned.”
“Amen.” Gloria jerked her head, then lowered it, rummaging through the cupboard again.
“Unless, of course,” Sabrina said with a casual air, “you decide to forgive.”
I chewed on that, tasting how sweet it would be, and almost fell into the tempting notion. I’d done that one too many times. “I don’t trust him.”
“Don’t trust him not to leave you, you mean?”
I nodded, leaning over to grab the tape out of the drawer.
“You don’t need to answer him, you know,” Gloria said. “My sister, Clara, kept her first husband waiting two years before she agreed to marry him.”
“Didn’t he die a year later?”
Gloria moaned. “Seriously, Sabrina?”
Yeah, seriously? I shot her a look, and Sabrina winced, hands filled with flowers, upturned. “Whoops.”
My lips itched with the urge to smile. “While I appreciate you guys wanting to help, I can’t decide right now. So… I’m just not going to.”
“Ever? So you’re saying no, then?” Gloria asked, shock painting the question.
“No, I’m not saying anything.”
The two women were silent for a solid few minutes, but I could feel them biting their tongues and groaned again. “Out with it.”
“You don’t need to marry him to forgive him. To try again.”
“What she said.” Gloria raised a hand in the air, shaking it.
My own stopped moving, and I lowered the bouquet to the countertop. “I know that.” I did know that, but I was still stuck. Maybe it was self-preservation. Maybe it was Aiden. Maybe it was hormones running amuck.
Or maybe it was because, as Adela said, once I took a step too far in one direction, it was done.
Something began while something else ended.
Over.
The new year brought no clarity, only more anxiety.
And with my looming due date, I knew I couldn’t keep living in tangles. Yet there I was, staring at a text from Aiden asking me to see him later at his apartment, and tied up in knots.
“Hey,” Everett said, tapping on my opened bedroom door. “I got some more snacks, and the drug store had a sale on wet wipes.”
“Oh, thanks.”
He shifted on his feet. “Are you busy?”
In answer, I locked my phone, setting it down as I gestured for him to come in. “What’s that?”
Everett stared down at what looked to be an album in his hands. “A photo album.”
I straightened as much as I could, and he sat beside me, the bed dipping.
The album looked old. Dust stains speckled the black leather and lined the page edges. “It’s yours?” He nodded, hands