The lump in my throat swells. I want to make it better, but I don’t have the words. “I want to marry you” isn’t something I can say to him yet, and we both know it.
“What are you so afraid of, La?” he asks, his tone dropping to an almost non-existent level.
Everything.
What if I don’t know how to be a good mom? What if my dreams don’t fit next to his? What if my wanderlust crashes into his roots and we both break?
“I don’t know how to be the woman you want, Holden.”
He smiles then, so big I think my heart might explode. “You just have to beyou, Laila. I’ll be right here the whole time. Your partner in crime, and everything else. Have some faith? Believe in yourself, and in what we’re building.”
His words echo from the night on the dock, “Sometimes you have to stop running to get caught by the right person.” I’m paraphrasing, I’m sure, but the message is what matters.
He makes it sound so easy. It’s tempting to simply sayyes.
Instead, I murmur, “I’m exhausted, and it’s been a weird day. Let’s talk about it in the morning, after we’ve both had some sleep.”
Practical. Safe. The lie I keep telling myself.
He strokes my cheek one more time, then withdraws back to his side of the pillow wall. I miss the contact immediately.
I’m so tired of feeling alone. Even here—with him in the same bed—I feel alone.
Then stop choosing lonely, my heart whispers, sounding suspiciously like Henry narrating one of his folklore essays.
With a sigh, I stare up at the ceiling. I consider wishing for soft music just to see what might happen, but I don’t think I want to know. Instead, the silence just stretches, broken only by the fire’s crackle and the storm whispering againstthe glass.
I glance over at him, considering all the ways I could get him to talk to me some more. Even if it means being honest, because the quiet is worse. I removed enough pillows to see him as we talked, which means I can see the broad line of his back and the flex of his shoulders beneath his shirt. If I focus back on the ceiling, I can pretend I’m not attracted to him, and this pillow wall is flimsy.
But looking away doesn’t change how miserable I am temperature-wise. I need the blanket for comfort reasons, but it’s like sleeping in a sauna.His body heat.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore.
“Do you fuel your own oven, Holden? What in the world—you’re like a thousand degrees.”
He rolls back over, blinking. “What?”
“You’re radiating heat through this fortress. “
He tosses a pillow at me. “Must be a memory foam mattress.”
I snort. “Of course you’re comfortable.”
“La, this house adjusts to whatyouneed.”
“Then it’s defective,” I grumble, flopping onto my side.
I might even readjust my pillow a tad violently.
The bed shifts again, and I can feel his gaze on me even before he says anything.
“What’s wrong, La? Can’t sleep?”
I stare at the bedroom door for a long moment, contemplating how much I want to say. When he stays quiet, I glance over my shoulder, surprised by the soft expression on his face.
“It’s just weird to be back,” I admit. “I thought it would feel like it normally does, but it doesn’t. Everything is different.”
Emma told me once that running doesn’t make the pastdisappear. She was right. It just makes it harder to recognize what’s waiting when you finally stop.
