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“And I don’t want to move into yours.”
“Good. Because I didn’t ask.”
He laughed. “But when we get there…”
My stomach fluttered.
“I think we should find something together.”
I stopped. “A house?”
“Yeah, something that belongs to both of us from the beginning.”
My throat tightened. “You’re talking far ahead.”
“I said eventually.”
I looked at him. “No rush.”
“No rush.”
I smiled. “But yeah.”
He squeezed my hand. “When we get there, I want something that’s ours.”
Ours. That word used to scare me because I had once built an entire world around an ours that didn’t actually belong to me.
“I’d like that.”
Nash smiled. “Good.”
Later, sitting beside him in the car with his hand resting on my thigh, I realized that I had once believed being chosen meant a man leaving another woman and coming to me. I knew better now. Being chosen wasn’t winning someone from someone else. It wasn’t secrecy. It wasn’t waiting. It wasn’t proving I was prettier, easier, more understanding, more patient, or more deserving.
Sometimes being chosen looked incredibly ordinary. It looked like a man showing up when he said he would, telling the truth before you had to uncover it, making space, giving you choices, and letting you give him the same. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t asking love to prove itself by hurting someone else.
Epilogue
Almost Two Years Later
“Take that shit down.”
Nash didn’t even turn around. “No.”
“Nash.”
“No.”
“It is ugly.”
“Your sister made it.”
“That does not make it less ugly.”
From somewhere upstairs, Klair yelled, “I HEARD THAT!”
I looked toward the ceiling. “GOOD!”
Nash laughed while I crossed my arms and stared at the monstrosity hanging on our living-room wall. Our living-room wall.
