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“I can’t do that right now.” She touched her delicate fingertips to her lips. “When this is all over, we can—”
“Say yes.” I shoved my fingers into my hair, a throb like nothing I’d ever felt surging through my skull. “I’m asking you to say yes.”
She shook her head, still facing away. “I’m not doing this right now. Not like this.”
She didn’t get it. It had to be now. Everything else was unsettled. The foundation of my world was crumbling, and all I could do was apply duct tape and throw a wish up to the stars it would hold. Things I knew to be true were lies. Up was down and down was up.
I needed her to be the one unchanging thing I could count on. If I was worried I was going to lose her when some arbitrary date came along, how did I deal with the thousand other things I had to?
“Say yes, Saoirse.” I yanked at the collar of my shirt. It was too fucking tight for the knot in my throat. Somewhere in the condo, my phone rang, but there was no one else I wanted to talk to, so it barely registered. “Look at me and say yes.”
She wouldn’t give me her face, so I walked around her until she had no choice but to see me. Her eyes flared, but she wouldn’t say the word. Her teeth dug into her bottom lip, trapping her answers inside.
“I am asking you to say yes.” I slapped my chest in frustration. “I’m telling you I need it.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
There was a hurricane inside me. Wild and uncontrollable, shaking my knees and balling my fists. A deluge of exhaustion and anger warred in my brain. My sister’s cries echoed like rolling thunder in my ears. I had to yell to make myself heard over it all.
“Then say yes.”
Saoirse flinched, taking a step away from me. “Stop it, Luca.”
My phone began ringing again, driving a spike into my aching head.
“You say yes to everyone else. You dropped everything to work for another man forfree. But you won’t say yes to me? You love me and you won’t say yes?”
Her shoulders jumped and bunched around her ears, which told me I was louder than I’d meant to be, but everything was swirling out of control. She was supposed to be my fucking buoy. My soft place. And I couldn't get a grasp on her. On anything.
Tears were rolling down her cheeks when her eyes locked on mine. “You’re asking me to spill wine on myself.”
That brought me to a dead stop.
“What?” But I’d heard her—and everything behind those words.
“If I said yes to you, it would be to make you happy. And god, Luca, I want to make you happy. I would do anything for you to feel that way.”
I finished her thought since I knew exactly where she was going with it. “But not at your own expense, right? Being married to me for real would mean spilling wine on yourself. That’s how you see it.”
My phone rang again. This was the third or fourth time. Saoirse and I both turned in the direction of the grating sound.
“You should get that,” she whispered.
“We’re not finished talking.” But the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. In a moment of clarity, I remembered the crisis currently happening outside these walls.
I walked back to the entry. Seeing my dad’s name on the screen drew me up tight. Something was wrong.
“Hello?”
“Thank Christ,” he uttered. “You need to get down to Davis Memorial as soon as you can. Clara’s been in a car accident and they’re taking her into surgery to deliver the baby.”
Blood drained from my face. “No. Accident?”
“I’ll explain it when you get here. She’s going to need all of us around her.”
My heartbeat whooshed in my ears. “I’ll be there. Davis Memorial.”
Saoirse was beside me when I hung up, concern etched on the face I loved more than anything but could barely look at.
