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“Everything okay?” I ask, as if he’d tell me.
He hesitates.
But a moment later, he just nods and presses his lips to my forehead. “More than okay, Daisy. Much more than okay.”
And with that, I smile and try to force my worries away.
RULE #21: DON’T BE AFRAID OF HOPE
Daisy
“What are you reading?” I ask. We’re on a bench in the middle of the same park we visited on our first day—his favorite park. It’s our last day in Paris before we go home tomorrow, and I’m not ready to leave. I feel weightless here. Like I’ve finally found the freedom I was longing for after my mother died. It’s the city and it’s him. I’m living in a snapshot of the life I’ve always wanted to live, and tomorrow, I’ll have to wake up from this dream.
My feet are in his lap as I rest my head against the side of the bench, watching the people passing by. He turns the old book in his hand to show me the cover. It’s the collected works of Emily Dickinson that I bought for him yesterday, and I feel a blush warm my cheeks.
“Are you brushing up on your poetry?” I ask.
“Might as well.”
“Will you read me something?”
“Of course,” he says before flipping through a few pages. When he lands on one he likes, he clears his throat and reads it out loud in a gentle tone.
On the first line, my throat tightens and my eyes sting.
“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words, and never stops—at all…”
It was my mother’s favorite. Hearing it in his voice is like an invasion. Two worlds colliding.
While he speaks, the thumb of his free hand runs along the top of my foot to my ankle then back up, and I stare at him as if my heart is being slowly pulled out of my chest.
Even without confirmation, I’ve accepted the possibility that my mother loved Ronan. And I hate the reminder because it means I have no right to love him the same way. He’s not mine. How much would it hurt her to know that he and I are together? To know what we’ve done? If she were alive, would she be angry with me? Jealous, even?
His voice offers warmth and comfort as he reads, and I try to find something new in the poem that I never found before. But hope feels like a trigger. I wasted hope on my dying mother, so it feels foolish to hope for anything now.
To wish for happiness like this to last more than one week in Paris. Is it too soon to hope for more? Is it foolish to hope for forgiveness when I decide to come clean?
When I turn my head toward Ronan, he finishes the poem and looks at me. “What do you think?”
“That was beautiful,” I reply, shoving down the rising despair inside me.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I like that one.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
He tilts his head, resting the book on his lap before linking his fingers with mine. “Of course.”
“Do you still feel the pain? From losing your family.”
His fingers squeeze mine as his eyes narrow. “Yes. It never goes away. There are moments when I feel like they were just here. Like they should still be here.”
I force myself to swallow, watching the way his face changes when he brings up his grief, how his features grow heavier and more weary.
“But over the years, those moments don’t come as often. And everything in between is fine.”
“Just fine?” I ask, resting my head against the back of the bench.
“Sometimes better than fine,” he replies with a soft smile. When he brings my knuckles to his lips, I feel that tug on my heart again. “I’ll be honest, Daisy. I used to think I could replace them. That if I got married again and had other kids, it would eclipse the pain I felt. But I did fall in love, many times, and I did get married again, but nothing ever dissolved the grief completely. So, I stopped trying.”
