I hang up on him and shove the phone into my back pocket. I plaster an overexaggerated smile across my face, giving Keri my undivided attention. “What did you find, Angel Face?”
“A little of this and a little of that. Some picture books for Madison and Beverly’s boys. Some art made out of antique barnwood. Flowers for Jenny and Janie from Langston Petals. And…” She reaches into one of the bags and pulls out a vintage Rand McNally road atlas, the collectible tattered at the edges. “This!”
She hands it to me, and I palm the worn cover.
“It’s a collector’s item, going back fifty years. I thought it would be fun to trace our adventure through it. I also got an idea for our living room. You know, where our hideous green velvet couch lives?”
“What kind of idea?”
I watch her, wanting this version of her in my memory always. Blonde hair tucked under a ball cap, sun-kissed cheeks. Blue eyes bright with excitement, hands gripping her shopping bags. I love spending every waking moment with her, seeing the bits of herself she doesn’t bring out for just anyone. Her routines and her affinity for pretty things. Her loyalty and quiet caretaking. She’s come into her own since we met. And I like to think I had something to do with it. She’s finally let her walls down. She’s grabbing life by the horns rather than passively waiting for her circumstances to change. And they could change drastically.
“I want us to get a giant map we can hang on the wall and mark pushpins at all the places we’ve visited.”
I nod eagerly, but my gut knots with dread. The closer we get to home, the more panic settles in. I have unfinished business with Roxy waiting. And now Dan, along with his coworker's bully client Pierre Jardo, have put me in an impossible situation. My pulse races. What if we just drove away and never looked back?
A rumble of thunder in the distance interrupts my thoughts. I blink and look at Keri.
“Did you hear me?” she asks. She sets her bags down and sits on my lap, palming my cheeks between her hands. “Where were you just now?”
I rub my face, trying to ground myself. “Nowhere.”Everywhere at once. My mind is racing, exhaustion and worry written across my features. “Sorry. I’m just tired. I’m here. I’m listening,” I say, forcing myself back to the present.
She tilts her head so her ballcap won’t be in the way and kisses my cheek. “There’s rain in the forecast. We’d better get out of here before it hits.” She wraps her arms around my neck and whispers seductively, “Take me home, Adam.”
Relief rushes through me. “To the camper van, your apartment, or to the old farmhouse? We have many choices, you and I.”
She purses her lips to the side and taps her index finger against her cheek while thwarting off a smile. “Hmmm. I don’t know. I was kind of thinking about the old farmhouse. You know, the property where we’re planning on living out our very own happily ever after?”
I nod. “Good choice.”
She stands and picks up her bags. I grab Molly’s leash and my paper coffee cup. “Do you want to trade?”
She eyes the coffee for a beat before she shakes her head. “Nope, I’m good.”
We walk past the small-town shops of Lanston Falls, heading toward the van. Dark clouds have formed and pepper the sky, rolling rumbles in the distance. “And for the record, I think a giant map with pushpins is totally the way to go in our living room.”
Her smile is magnetic, and I’m a lucky man to be the recipient. She’s always including me. She looks out for me. She compliments strangers. She stops and pets every dog she passes,thanks to Molly, even though she once claimed to be a cat person. She makes me laugh with her goose-honk when I’m sad. She feels lost loved ones in rays of sunshine and rainbows and in the constellations at night. She buys my friends' toddlers gifts, and she pauses to listen to the birds. She gives and never takes, her heart full of big love. Every single day. She is love, and for that, I’m grateful.
My resolve hardens: I must protect and provide for her. I’m determined to build trust between us, which means telling her about Dan and Pierre, and finally confronting Roxy and Justin. Whatever it takes, I won’t let anything threaten what we have. But first, I just want to get home. I want to wrap her in my arms with the summer rain falling on our tin roof, and let the world fade away, if only for one moment where we’re safe.
Where the storms can’t reach us.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Keri
“That’s me. That’s our photo from Feather Falls.”
Adam and I are sitting at the kitchen table. His laptop is open, displaying the dreamy image. I notice a familiar French logo in beautiful script near the hem of my cerulean dress.
“What isNouvelle Vie?”
“It’s a French perfume by Pierre Jardo.”
“You mean,thePierre Jardo?”
“The one and only.”
“Oh, my goodness. How did this happen? How did he get our photo?”
