He doesn’t finish, and I don’t ask him to. There’s still something too cautious about the way he takes a step toward me, and I’m sure it’s my fault for running out on him this morning. I stay where I am now, my hands in the pockets of my trunks so I don’t reach for him and forget to talk.
“Will you still answer anything?”
“I always have,” Darren says. “And I don’t really want to stop now.”
I knew that already, but the same could be said about the other things I’m going to ask. It’s unfair, maybe to both of us, to do anything but sweep him off his feet and kiss him until we’re too wrapped up in each other to return to the party we’re hosting. My only compromise is to pull one hand free and watch as my fingertips draw shaky lines from Darren’s collarbone to his side so I can hold him there.
“Do you love me?” I ask, my voice strong but soft.
“Yes.”
“Are youinlove with me?”
The distinction matters, but it changes nothing. “Yes.”
“And you knew that before last night?”
“Yes.” Darren pauses then. Tips his head sideways. “Didyouknow before last night?”
“That you’re in love with me?”
“Thatyou’rein love withme.”
A surprised little laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “You sound incredibly confident about that.”
“I don’t think I wasconfidentabout it until about twelve seconds ago,” he says. “But when you cried last night, I—it was just a matter of figuring out whether they were good tears or bad.”
“They were confused tears, I think. I knew we weren’t just playing around anymore—I knew I was crossing lines in my head—but I hadn’t put a word to it yet. I didn’t think I could.”
Darren reaches for me, his fingers moving over my hair and my beard and my lips like he needs to memorize the way this feels, apart from the riotous beat of his heart. Or maybe that’s only my heart. Either way, I let him take what he needs, my other arm finally curled around his waist when his lips brush over mine.
“Have you put a word to it now?”
I kiss him, a deep and delicate thing that spreads like a salve over wounds mostly healed years ago. His tongue tastes like early morning laughter and late night promises and a thousand adventures in between. The life he breathes into me is as real as any I’ve lost, and I’m okay with how my chest cracks open again if that’s the best way to let Darren all the way in.
“I don’t know how it happened,” I mumble against mouth, another small kiss too tempting to ignore. “But somehow I’m the lucky bastard who’s fallen astoundingly, voraciously, irrevocably in love one more time.”
We kiss again, for longer this time, and then Darren’s head falls to my bare chest, heavy with relief. “Are we keeping this to ourselves for now?”
“Well, I think at least four people down there already know.”
He slowly raises his head at that, but I only catch the cornerof his frown before he looks over his shoulder at the framed photograph hanging in my hallway—the one Adrian had taken of a little girl on a carousel—then back to me again.
“Speaking of keeping things to ourselves, why didn’t you tell me about Lucy? She was surprised you hadn’t.”
“I don’t know why she’d be surprised. She knows I don’t have a habit of talking about her personal life,” I say. “But I’m sorry if it feels like I lied to you that night.”
I nod toward the same photograph now, and remember when Darren had asked me whether I have pictures like that from when Lucy was little. I’d answered him as well as I could when wedidride carousels and Idohave pictures and it’s true that I haven’t looked at them in years. But it’s tricky when I’m not good at admitting she wasn’t Lucy back then—that we didn’t know she wassheback then.
I’ve never known how to share those details with other people, even if Lucy gave Michelle and me permission long ago. Part of me wants to drag Adrian back up here just so I can tell him there’s definitely one thing I’ve always done wrong, but then Darren is wrapped around me again.
“Hey, no,” he murmurs. “It’s okay if it’s complicated for you, but according to her, you’ve always been the fucking best. And that’s a quote, by the way—‘the fucking best’—because your daughter swears almost as often as I do.”
“Not around me, she doesn’t,” I huff.
Darren just laughs. “Maybe she doesn’t want toget grounded.”
I laugh too, and then I have to wipe a few different kinds of tears out of my eyes before we hear cheers and whistles and applause from the backyard. Darren and I look at each other, amused and at least a little nervous about whatever is happening. And whatever is about to happen.