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“Sure you don’t want to go back inside?” I ask her, testing how far this sense of adventure of hers will go.
She grabs my face with her hands and meets my gaze. “Don’t you dare,” she warns. “I haven’t had nearly enough.”
I grin. “Is this what happens when you stop thinking and start living?”
“Apparently,” she says softly. Her eyes flicker with excitement as she runs her hand through my drenched hair. “Tell me something. Why did you bring me here?”
The woman certainly doesn’t dance around the hard questions. I could give her the conservative answer, the easy lie—but I promised her the truth.
As much of it as I can bear to give her.
“I was trying to correct my first mistake.” It’s hard to talk normally when I’m still inside of her, still teetering on the edge.
A fresh raindrop strikes her cheek. The rain above us has slowed, as though the sky has tired itself out.
“What mistake?” she asks.
“I chose the wrong sister.” But then I shake my head. “No, actually, that’s not quite right. I should have made you tell me your name.”
The truth doesn’t flush out everything that has happened since then. But it’s a start. I’ve been haunted by the would’ve-could’ve-should’ves since that damned engagement party, but in reality, they were whispering in my ear from the moment I drove away that first night.
I would have chosen Taylor from the start if I’d known who she was.
I could have done things right and avoided this mess.
I should have turned the car around and pulled her back inside.
Taylor’s eyes are heavy with emotion, but she bites her tongue. “You didn’t want a marriage based on love,” she reminds me.
I nod. “I didn’t.”
“Why?” she asks boldly. “You know, since we’re telling the truth.”
I sigh. “I was scared to love my wife…because loving her meant the risk of losing her would cripple me. It would make everything harder.”
Those rosebud lips of hers part. I can sense that I’ve crossed some sort of invisible line that I didn’t even know to look for. Somehow, this wild, wonderful, stubborn woman has backed me into a corner.
“You love me?”
And there it is—the one line I drew in the sand myself. So long ago that I forget when it first appeared.
Doesn’t she understand that she’s asking too much of me?
“Taylor…”
“It’s okay,” she says, cupping my face. “It’s okay. I don’t need you to say it. I already know.”
I frown, desperate to fuck her into silence so we can avoid burning my heart with her magnifying glass. “How?”
She lightly traces the corner of my eye and smiles. “I can see it in your eyes. And I can feel it in my bones.” She looks away for a moment, her eyes growing sad for a fraction of a second. “And I suppose, if nothing else, that comforts me.”
“What does?”
“The thought that, if I’m going to hell, at least I’m going there with you.”
One last crack of thunder rumbles across the sky. She doesn’t flinch and neither do I.
That’s the problem with freedom: sometimes, it goes to your head. It makes you feel invincible, even when you’re not.
