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She nodded, her eyes a little wide.
“Perfect timing, I guess,” she said, her words dry. “I have a wedding to pay for and you’re having a kid.”
We stood in shocked silence for a moment. It was like our parents had known this was coming.
“You get half,” I said eventually, setting the will down. “But I want the diamond.”
She only smiled at me and blew out her breath. “George is going to freak!”
I walked home an hour later flush with cash and pale as a ghost. I walked into the apartment to find Sierra asleep on the couch, an empty carton of ice cream resting in the crook of her arm. Ilingered in the archway leading into the open kitchen and living area for a moment before rounding the edge of the couch and sitting next to her.
She opened one eye, then another, her expression shifting from a sleepy kind of blissfulness to one of pure panic.
“What’s wrong?” she cried, sitting straight up, the carton bouncing onto the ground.
“Nothing,” I said, unable to even form the words needed to explain my shock. My parents were likely looking down at me, laughing their asses off for my stupidity. I’d dug in my heels about looking at the safety deposit box, thinking it full of the weird stuff Dad liked to collect, often off the side of the road. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Me?” she laughed. “What I always do, a whole bunch of nothing.”
“Great,” I whispered.
“What’s wrong with you, Pete?”
“I think… everything is just falling into place for me, finally. I’ve never been so… happy.”
She got to her knees and leaned in, kissing me on the cheek. I turned to face her and kissed her properly, pulling her into me so she was straddling my lap.
Then I pulled the diamond out of my pocket and showed it to her.
“We have some shopping to do tomorrow,” I said, balancing the diamond over her ring finger.
She gave me a look that conveyed her confusion.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
“I robbed a bank,” I lied, and she swatted me. “I think… I’m going to tell you something crazy, but I think my parents have been waiting for me to find you, Sierra, so I could give you this.”
She arched her brow but said nothing as I explained what Keely and I had done today. What we should have done fifteen years ago.
“I’m buying you a minivan tomorrow,” I said absently, running my fingers through my hair.
She laughed, and I laughed, and for the first time in my entire life I felt totally and wholly at peace.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sierra
Sleep wasn’t coming easy. I always felt like my parents or Jonah were going to show up any moment and take me away. It was an awful feeling, and only got worse after Pete and I had laid our feelings out in the open.
Maybe it was just stress, but the insomnia I’d experienced two nights in a row now was starting to chip away at me and make me… nervous. Like everything that was happening between me and Pete right now was too good to be true, too wonderful to be real, and reality was on its way to crush us to death.
I’d never been to a midnight mass before. It was almost Halloween, and Hot Springs had taken on a spooky vibe extenuated by the mist rolling over my feet as I trudged home. Mass hadn’t made me feel any better, and getting into bed with Pete that night hadn’t made those feelings of anxiety lessen either.
I tossed and turned next to him, and eventually worried I’d accidentally wake him up, so I got out of bed and went to read on the couch for a while.
Time was moving at a slow crawl. I got some snacks and made a little nest, hanging there on the couch until the clock struck two. I wasn’t tired. I couldn’t turn my brain off at all, but I couldn’t focus on reading my book either.
When three rolled around I got up, my legs tingling from being splayed out in a weird position for so long.
