Page 169 of The Night We Met

I pulled my face back. “Me? How?”

“Because I know how smart you are.”

“You’re just as smart as me,” I said. “Smarter.”

She gazed at me. “I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am if it wasn’t for you.”

“You were always going to be something,” I said. “It just would have taken longer.” I balled up my napkin now too. “But I will take credit for being a very savvy businessman with an eye for good investments.”

“Stop it,” she laughed.

We smiled at each other. Then the corners of her lips dropped the tiniest bit. “Can I see your hand?” she asked. Then she reached for it.

The reflex not to touch her was gone now. I let her take my hand and watched her run a thumb over the shiny scars where the scabs from hitting Mike used to be. My heart didn’t leap out of my shirt like I thought it would at the unexpected touch from her—it just hurt instead.

“I wish this healed better,” she said sadly.

“They’ll fade,” I said while she frowned at the marks on my knuckles.

I wanted so badly to thread my fingers in hers.

I wanted to lean across the seat and kiss her.

If this last month had taught me anything it was that Larissa was never going to be just some woman to me. I think it was always supposed to be us. But she’d taken a different path and even though we’d found our way back to each other, it couldn’t be like it should.

There are lots of ways to love someone, I realized.

You could go your whole life never touching them and it didn’t negate the feeling. She could be the love of my life, even if we only ever had this.

Having dinner with her every night, her sweaters on the back of my chairs. Woofarine always smelling like her.

I felt privileged just to be able to talk to her whenever I wanted. To help her, to be useful to her in any way. To open a jar for her, pick something up at the store and bring it home, to wash her coffee cup and put her clothes in the dryer.

It’s the way it’s supposed to be with people you love. The unrelenting urge to care for them.

The pain and longing when you can’t.

I loved that she nested in my home. Sprinkled colorful little things all over the house the way she did at the apartment with Nancy. Made it her own. I could feel her in every room but mine and it made me never want to go to bed. She burned candles that smelled like cookies and organized the library in her room and put Mom’s paper quilling in the middle of the shelf. Mom would have loved it, to be remembered, nestled in with all those books in the bedroom where she always stayed when she came to visit.