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Neither of us would ever leave again.
EPILOGUE
Ilooked in the full-length mirror, wondering if my secret was obvious. No, not my secret, my mind corrected itself. We were done with secrets. What I was hiding now was a surprise.My reflection tilted her dark head as her eyes traveled the length of my body, pausing at certain places, narrowing her eyes. My body skimming black dress was meant to fit like a silky soft second skin, and if it pulled tighter across my breasts and stomach, only intense scrutiny would reveal it.
Still, I changed into a flowing red dress in a soft knit jersey material that hugged without clinging. Lately, Landon’s intense scrutiny had been reserved for making sure everything about our new home was perfect, but I knew that if I really wanted to surprise him, I couldn’t take any chances. He saw things that other people didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. He might see what had surprised even me before I got a chance to tell him myself if I wasn’t careful.
It was hard to believe that it had caught me off guard. I was normally so in tune with my body, but I’d been wrapped up in making sure the house was perfect, too. As soon as we got the keys, Emma and I had started staking out the garden we’d planned out. She wanted to fill it with flowers that reminded her of Hawaii. I wanted to fill it with herbs and vegetables. Luckily, we’d had enough space to make both of us happy. We’d transplanted what we could from the measly stretch of outdoor space at the penthouse, then we began planting everything we thought we could grow, from marigolds to cacti. At the end of every day, Landon came out and praised our progress, but it was increasingly obvious he couldn’t tell the difference between a dandelion and a rhododendron.
Landon was less interested in the garden and more focused on making sure the special windows he’d had installed lived up to their unbreakable name. He’d invited our nearest neighbor, an MLB pitcher, to throw fastballs at them. Luckily, the athlete had declined. Landon had taken a hammer to a few of them instead and been satisfied enough that he didn’t follow through with his idea of putting bars on the lower windows.
I could tell he wanted to though. When he stared out the window, he wasn’t admiring the view like I was. He was daydreaming about stout metal grids over the monolithic laminated polycarbonate that had repelled the advances of his hammer. It would have driven me crazy before, but now I just shook my head at him and laughed.
Though I was applying a deep red color to my lips, I couldn’t stop them from curving as I thought about the effort Landon was going to. It wasn’t just the effort to make our home as safe as possible for Emma and me that made my heart feel painfully full when I thought about it. It was the fact that, despite his desire to dig a moat around us and pull up the drawbridge, he was learning to compromise. I knew it wasn’t easy for him – it wasn’t really that easy for me either – but we were figuring it out. Our home would never quite be the lush, divisionless oasis that invited the outdoors in like our house in Hawaii had, but I didn’t miss it anymore.
I loved seeing Landon’s stamp everywhere. The way his walls were designed to keep us safe. The way his neutrals balanced out my love of maximalist floral. His ascetic aesthetic softened by the knick knacks Emma and I had collected over the years. He didn’t get the point of them, just like he didn’t get the point of the garden, but he liked hearing the stories behind them. The perfect conch shell that Emma had pulled from the sand the day she took her first step. It was on the beach of course, and like a reward, it had taken her right to the shell. The small lei she’d worn in her newborn pictures, courtesy of Casey who had flown in to help me through the first month. I had a few mementos that reminded me of my parents, too, but I wasn’t ready to put them out. The koa wood jewelry box Robert had given me would stay hidden away for a long time, the diamond necklace my mother had given me for my twenty-first birthday locked inside of it.
Thinking of them still hurt, even now.
Especially now.
I finished my makeup and checked my reflection again, pivoting from side to side to make sure the dress concealed any changes in my figure.
“You look beautiful,” Landon said, appearing in the mirror behind me so suddenly that it startled me. I tried to hide how my heart had leapt into my throat in that split second between hearing his voice and identifying it as his, but he saw it on my face. He wrapped his arms around me from behind. “You never have to be scared again, Cami. I promise.”
I relaxed back into him, reaching up to wrap my hands around his strong forearms. “I know. It’s silly. Why am I still so on edge when there was never any actual danger?”
“Not all danger is physical,” Landon said quietly. “The people you loved most in the world terrorized you in order to control you. It’s not easy to get past that.”
I closed my eyes, breathing him in, refusing to let thoughts of my mother and Robert bring me down. Not today. I would cry about them for years, I was certain. Maybe I’d even forgive them one day. But that was something to figure out later. Today was about Landon and Emma and me.
And my surprise.
“Are you ready?” I asked, opening my eyes again. He looked ready, but then, even living with him, I rarely saw Landon out of his suit pants and button-down shirts. He claimed he didn’t need comfortable clothes becausetheywere comfortable. Casey, who lived in athleisure wear, her brand of course, thought he must be a robot.
“I’m ready,” he confirmed. “And Casey just got here. She brought you a cactus.”
“My San Pedro?”
Landon shrugged, indifferent. “It’s got spikes, that’s all I know.”
When we went downstairs, we found Casey introducing Emma to the cactus. “It likes between six and eight hours of direct sun,” she was explaining.
“But what’s itsname?” Emma was asking. She’d started trying to name all of the plants. It drove Landon insane trying to remember if the Japanese Maple was Bridget or Coraline.
My lips twitched at the look on his face as they started going through possible names.
“I can’t remember any more damn names,” he said when we got in the car.
“None?” I teased.
“None,” Landon said emphatically. He cast me a sideways glance, no doubt wondering why I was so amused. I tried to make my lips form a straight line, not wanting to give it away too soon. I’d done this about as wrong as a person could do the first time around. I was determined to make it perfect this time.
When we got to the restaurant, the maître d took us to the same booth we’d sat at the first night we had dinner together when I got back to town. As we sat down, it struck me how much our lives had changed. Five months ago, we’d sat across this table, hardly even able to look at each other. Anger and resentment and stifled love thickening the air between us. Attraction simmering beneath. Secrets tearing us apart.
“This is where we sat before,” Landon noted, glancing around. “Is that a coincidence?”
It wasn’t. I’d called the restaurant ahead of time and requested this specific booth. I wanted to at least overwrite this piece of our complicated past with a beautiful memory by telling him my surprise here.
