Page 156 of Romeo

That didn’t make telling him about Charlie easier.

It made it necessary.

I picked up the phone again.

Me: Goodnight, Jasper

Jasper: Dors bien, Ma Belle. Dream of the future.

I closed my eyes.

For most of my life, imagining the future had meant preparing for the next thing that could go wrong. Even now, college felt less like freedom and more like another test I had to pass to prove I could stand on my own.

Jasper talked about the future differently.

Coffee and breakfast. A bigger house if the woman he loved wanted it. Waiting if she wasn’t sure. Ordinary things that to me felt enormous.

I thought about Charlie, about Jasper holding the baby in the picture, and about the truth still sitting between us.

Someday soon, I was going to have to trust him with all of it.

For the first time, I could almost imagine doing it without automatically imagining him walking away afterward.

That felt like progress.

Maybe even hope.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Romeo

The clubhouse was quiet by nine-thirty Thursday night. Most of the brothers were either out or had disappeared into their rooms, and I’d been stretched across my bed pretending I might eventually find enough motivation to get up when my phone lit with Fiona’s name.

Ma Belle: Do you ever think about the night we met?

I smiled before I finished reading.

Think about it?

There wasn’t a day since December when some piece of that night hadn’t found its way back into my head. Sometimes it was the first moment I saw her standing beside Josie. Other times it was the sound of her laugh after I kissed her hand.

Mostly, I remembered those silver eyes looking at me while she asked a question no girl her age should’ve had enough pain behind her to ask.

Me: Every day.

Her response came immediately.

Ma Belle: Every day?

Me: Every single one.

I could picture her in Virginia with her phone in her hands, probably curled beneath a blanket even though it was summer because Fiona treated blankets like a basic human right regardless of the weather.

Ma Belle: What do you remember?

I didn’t have to think about the answer.

Me: You asking whether girls like you got their happily ever after.