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“You could come, you know.” My voice was gritted down to nothing. I knew she wouldn’t, but I couldn’t not say it.
She smiled. “You know I can’t.”
I grasped her hand. “I know.” She’d told me how she was waiting to finish that job at that hotel. Then she was launching the project she’d always dreamed about. I knew what that was like. I knew that it was everything, and a pesky little thing like a fling couldn’t get in the way of that.
A fling. Characterizing what we had with that word felt ludicrous. Winona had changed me, in the short time I’d known her. She’d unearthed that ancient part of me I’d thought died. The one where I could love life. Where I could think about having fun again. Where I knew the specter of my father didn’t have to have control over me if I didn’t let it.
I’d never be the same.
We watched as the golden orb began to waver on the horizon, lighting the river and town below in orange and pink. The first of the stars were beginning to show—just white pricks of light against the navy sky, but still a wonder.
“Winona,” I said.
“Yes?” I could hear the tears in her voice, and clutched her hand harder. “Promise me you’ll go back to Newfoundland. You don’t need to forgive him, but you can’t let him keep you from your home. From your mom.”
I knew her mother was buried there, and I knew she wanted, more than anything, to say the goodbye she never got to say.
“I’ll get Sal to set it all up for you. I’ve got a plane, and a security guy who can take you the whole way.”
“No,” she said. “It’s fine, I can go myself.”
But I turned to her, taking her face in mine. Now that the idea had taken hold, I didn’t want to let it go. “Please. Let me do this, Winona. I feel like I haven’t done more than one good thing for you.”
“One thing!” She laughed, and now she really was crying now. “You’ve swept me off my feet Mitchell. Shown me princes do exist.”
I crushed her to me then, kissing her head and inhaling her scent and wanting to give her all the promises in the world about staying and making her my princess.
But then her lips were on mine and I forgot everything except the feel of her fitting so right in my arms.
Before we got in the car she pulled out her phone and took a photo of us, smiling, happy, together. “I’ll need proof to remember it happened,” she said.
“You can show them, I don’t mind,” I winked.
She threw her head back and laughed. She’d told me all about her friends, Cher and Sarah. How they’d been the ones to encourage her to come back to me when I’d been such an ogre. She’d told me how Cher was the one she was going to have take over her business, and how Sarah had stood up to her boss because she believed in what Winona was doing.
“I still say her boss is in love with her,” I said. “He’s just fighting it. Pulling her pigtails because he doesn’t know what else to do.”
Winona tucked her phone back in her pocket, looking skeptical.
I reached over and tugged gently on a strand of her hair. “See?”
And when she laughed, it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
We were almost at the cafe when the car in front of us slammed on its brakes, making both of us gasp. I slammed on my own brakes so as not to rear end them, my hand on Winona’s chest in an instinctive and completely useless move, given she was already wearing her seatbelt.
“What the fuck?” I exclaimed, laying on the horn.
“Mitch, wait,” Winona said, her brows bunching. “I think”— but she cut herself off as the driver’s side door opened.
A man got out—a big man. He had a beard, and wore a good suit. He was squinting as he walked back toward us.
Then my stomach lurched.
It was my brother.
I got out of the car. “Blake.”
He visibly relaxed. “Oh good. I was worried I was going to be pissing some random dickhead off.”
