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I glanced down at the letter and ran my fingertips across I love you. “I do,” I said softly.
“Then I think the only question is, how are you gonna get him back?”
My breath hitched as a smile rose on my face. I reached for Salma’s hand, my heart too big for my rib cage.
“I think I know just how.”
31
Compass
GRANT
I couldn’t seem to find it in me to unpack.
My suitcase laid on my bedroom floor with clothes spilling out, except these clothes didn’t fit here in this place. The boots, dusty and scuffed. The jeans, soft from wear. But the suits in the garment bag draped on the chair in my room didn’t fit me. Not anymore.
I’d gotten here yesterday and hadn’t worn anything but sleep pants and T-shirts since. They were the closest thing I had to the middle. The house was still and quiet and unrecognizable. Logically, I knew these were my things, but none of it felt like mine anymore. My life wasn’t mine anymore, but the life I wanted wasn’t on offer.
Two days driving and a day here alone had left me with too much time to think. My brain wanted a plan. What would I do for work? Because I never could sit still, especially not now. Where would I go, if not here? Should I stay? Go? It was all wrong.
None of those plans included her.
I ran my hand across my jaw, noting the feel of the beard I’d started, since shaving didn’t feel like me either. My living room was too still and quiet, so I’d turned on music. Maybe I’d need to get a cat or something, anything to make this place feel like less of a tomb. Maybe I’d leave the country, go somewhere sunny and sandy to forget. To run away. But I knew better—if I wasn’t able to leave my heartache in Lindenbach, my longitude didn’t matter.
I didn’t know how to make any decisions, my gut—which I relied on desperately and for all things—was broken. All I could think to do was sit here until I figured it out.
I was lost, my compass spinning wild.
I’d eaten takeout for every meal since I’d gotten back to my place—I couldn’t even call it home anymore. Jo hadn’t called, hadn’t texted. As badly as I wanted to know if she’d gotten my letter, I didn’t want to know at all. It was easier to think she’d thrown it in a fire than that she’d read it and decided not to call.
Rejection, I’d learned, came in too many forms. So many, I’d quit counting.
The doorbell rang—my dinner—and I heaved myself off the couch and to the door, not wanting to eat, but knowing I needed to. Maybe I’d go for a run, see if I couldn’t chase some of my thoughts down. Or maybe I’d—
On opening the door, I froze, the doorknob still in my hand. Dinner was not on my porch.
Jo was.
God, she was beautiful, her hair shining in the waning sunlight. Surely I was dreaming. Surely I’d fallen asleep on the couch, and my traitor brain had decided its full-time job was torturing me.
Jo’s cheeks flushed—I’d gone too long without speaking. “Hi,” she said meekly.
“I … Jo?”
The color on her cheeks deepened, and she rambled, “I … I hope it’s okay that I came, but texting just wasn’t enough. Calling would have been weird. I mean, how do you just call somebody after everything we’ve been through and say I love you? The only thing—it’s stupid now, I see that it’s stupid—was to just get on a plane and come here and see if maybe—”
Whatever else she wanted to say was lost, her lips occupied with mine.
I breathed for the first time in days, the sweet scent of grass and flowers and wild summertime filling my senses. She fit in my arms so perfectly, so exactly—had I always known that, or did I only notice now?—and I wrapped her up, held her close to make sure she was real. She went soft against me, her mouth pliant and giving and relieved.
The kiss ended with our foreheads together.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“Coming to get you back.”
“Get me back? I was already yours.”
“Even now? Even still?”
“Even more.”
She breathed for a moment, our foreheads still together until her gaze rose to meet mine. “I got your letter.”
“I figured.”
“You love me,” she said with a smile that was both shy and mischievous.
“I heard you love me too.”
The smallest laugh.
“Jo …” My voice broke. I swallowed to smooth it. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about my father or the truth about me. Telling you would mean losing you. But I didn’t have a choice in the end. I couldn’t let him … I couldn’t let myself …”
“I know.” She held my jaw. “You said you didn’t deserve forgiveness, but you do. What is true sorrow without sacrifice? You gave up everything to tell me the truth, even me. How could I do anything but forgive you? If I’d have known, I wouldn’t have let you leave.”
