“What about your parents?” she asks tentatively, as if she won’t let herself believe me. “You only married me so your father would?—”
“I’m done.” I pause just long enough to bury that version of myself. “I won’t keep bending over backward to impress them. If my dad can’t see my value running the company based on my work, my results… it’s his loss.”
I reach for her hands. This time, she lets me take them.
Her fingers are cold despite the fire. I wrap my hands around them to warm her up.
“You’re the first person who ever made me feel like I wasn’t falling short.”
Now that I’m putting it into words, that knowledge burns in my belly. A low, persistent flame that I’ve been carrying since the morning I woke up with her curled against my chest and didn’t want to move. Since the day she stood up to my father in my office. Since the kiss in the corn maze, the dance at the Moonshine, the texts that lit up my phone screen in a bland hotel room a thousand miles away and made me feel less alone than I ever was before meeting her.
“We got to know each other with no expectations.” I rub my thumb across her knuckles. “No agenda, no game plan. Westarted from scratch, and when I’m with you—” I clear my throat. “I can be myself, and that’s always been enough for you.”
Her chin trembles. A single tear spills over, tracing a glistening line down her cheek. But she doesn’t wipe it and doesn’t drop her gaze.
“I feel the same,” Peyton blurts. “With you, I never felt the need to adapt. Or dull myself. Or be embarrassed about my friends, or my messy hair, or the fact that I use kids’ toothpaste. I never had to hide parts of myself or shave my edges to fit into your life. You just—get me.” Her grip tightens on my fingers. “All of me.”
The fire turns the tear on her cheek into liquid gold.
“What do we do now?” she asks.
“Whatever the fuck we want.”
Her beautiful face breaks into a grin, and then she’s laughing.
When she stops chuckling, her gaze drops to my mouth. “Does the no-kissing-in-the-house rule still stand?”
“No more rules.” I shake my head. “Only the ones we make up.”
Her eyes lift back to mine. Brown and gold and shining. And asking…
“I’ve been dying to kiss you,” I reply to her unspoken question, “since I saw you running down that road in this dress.”
She smiles now. “Look how far we’ve come; the first time you only wanted to run me over and yell at me.”
“I’ve never been happier about a bike accident, and I mean it with every atom in my body…”
“But?”
“But first—” I tighten my grip on her hands, anchoring us both. “Do you think I’m right? That you should move out?”
The humor and heat in her eyes turn to serious consideration. I love this about her. She always takes meseriously. Even when I’m self-sabotaging at the worst possible moment, she gives the question the weight it deserves.
“Do you want me to move out?” she asks. “Or are you asking because it’s the rational, correct thing to do?”
“I hate this house when you’re not in it,” I confess. “Wednesday nights are the most miserable hours of my week. I want you up in my space all the time.” I brush a curl away from her temple, tucking it behind her ear. “But you told me you wanted to go on dates. Take things slow.”
She’s quiet for a beat. The fire pops in the silence.
“Maybe I was wrong,” she says. “I was following conventions that dictate a certain number of dates before having sex, and that couples have to be in a relationship for a respectable amount of time before getting engaged, then married.” A smirk plays at the corner of her mouth. “But we did everything backward, didn’t we? We started with the rings. And, I don’t know, signing divorce papers or moving out now would feel as wrong as reciting vows.”
She shakes her head. With those flowers woven into her hair, she looks like the day we met. She’s so fucking beautiful I’m going to break.
“It’s weird,” she continues. “I know that it’s too soon to be married. That normal people don’t do it this way. But?—”
She takes a breath. Deep enough that her shoulders rise and fall. “Do you want a divorce?”
“Not a chance,” I say.