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“It was the night I took you to the tree house.” He smiles like the memory is something precious to him.
I wish I could see the memory playing out in his head. Experience it through his eyes. “It must have been special.”
“It was the first time I told you I loved you,” he says.
“Oh.” It hurts to realize I might never recall something that obviously meant so much to both of us.
“I didn’t mean to say that.” He wipes a hand on his pants before he turns around and busies himself with the coffee pot and a fresh cup. “Forget I mentioned it.”
“Do you have any more photos?” I ask.
“A few.” He moves more slowly as he brings his cup and joins me at the counter. “I can send them to your phone.”
“Please,” I say.
My resolve to keep my guard up weakens as he scrolls through his gallery and sends me photos of us. Perhaps I could have picked a better time to talk to him about Narnia. Instead of accosting him when he told me he can’t sleep after the way he found me. He suffered too. And he is trying to protect me. He’s right that my brother triggers me—even more than normal.
Perhaps I need to give him and myself more time. I can’t just throw away our marriage.
“Are there any photos from our wedding?” I ask as I scroll through the images he sent me. “I don’t see any here.”
His shoulders stiffen. “Uh, not on my phone.”
“An album?”
“I think you took them with you when you moved out.” He concentrates on the photos he’s still scrolling through.
That makes sense I guess. We would have been preoccupied on the day. And I can’t even imagine that we wouldn’t have instituted some kind of social media ban. Possibly to the point that no-one had phones at all. “So they’d be at Adira’s?”
“I can ask him,” he says.
“No, I will.” I pull up Adira’s contact info and send my bestie a text. It might take a while for him to respond but since I’m not going to Narnia any time soon it’s not a big deal. “So you’re happy with the phone? You don’t want something different?”
“It’s perfect. Thank you.” I peck his cheek. Or, at least, it’s meant to be his cheek. But then my lips are skirting his jaw.
“You’re welcome.” He growls low in his throat as he wraps his hand around my neck to kiss me on the mouth. His tongue parts my lips and thrusts inside.
We’re fire every time. Even when I don’t mean for us to be. It’s all I can do to keep my legs under me. To not hike one over his hip and feel him press against me.
He smiles with his eyes when he pulls back. “What do you want to do today?”
My phone dings with a notification from my Google calendar. I pull up the app and frown at the screen. That’s a number I’ll need to add to my contacts. “According to my schedule I have therapy with Dr. Keller. Can you drive me to Sunny?”
“I can.” He’s more of a pussy cat than a bear. As long as I don’t push his panic buttons.
I press on his chest when he tries to breach the distance and kiss me again. “You know you can’t actually come to therapy with me, right?”
“I’ll wait in the car,” he says. “Or I’ll visit my mom. Sunny is the facility she’s in.”
“Oh. But that’s not how we met?” He said he was shot. That I was a birthday party princess. But his mom and I both spent time in the same facility. If I saw her would I know who she was?
“No, it’s not.”
“I better get ready.” I notice the time. “Can you tell me about it on the way?”
“I’d love to.” His eyes crinkle in the corners. Anything that brings us closer together makes him happy. I need to find a way to use that to convince him to take me to Narnia.
Thirty minutes later we’re in Rogue’s Jeep, driving toward Sunny. He tells me that we crossed paths many times without him knowing. I even ran into a door, not once, but twice in my attempts to hide from him.
