The stubborn, prideful part of me hasn’t wanted to tell anyone what Liam did, not even my sisters. But the lonely, broken, certain-I-am-unlovable part appreciated hearing Lark call Liam a bastard so much it was probably sinful. I needed to hear that I’m too good for the man who broke my heart into a thousand, razor-sharp pieces. I needed Lark’s strong hug and assurance that the best days of my life are still ahead of me. Just a few hours of not being alone with my secret—one of them, anyway— was enough to send me to bed with a smile on my face and a tiny, flickering flame of hope in my heart.
I fell asleep more easily than I have in months and dreamed a scandalous dream starring Nash Geary and his impossibly perfect body. The boy was perfect enough back when we were kids, but the man he is now…
Well, now, Nash is the stuff of fantasies.
And naughty dreams involving me, him, a bucket of ice in a hot tub, and not a stitch of clothing.
No matter how awkward and humiliating eating dinner with him had been, it was almost worth it for a dream like that. I haven’t had a dream that wasn’t a nightmare since I caught Liam cheating the first time.
Between the talk with Lark, the perfect late night with my sisters—eating massive amounts of cheese and snorting wine through my nose over stories from when we were little—and the delicious dream, I should be waking up invigorated and ready for a fresh start.
Instead, I have…dread.
It’s almost as if something inside of me knows.
Knows I’m going to run into Mason’s creepy uncle at the store while picking up the diapers I forgot to grab yesterday. Knows Parker will tell me that he received the message I left the other day asking if he still has any of Mason’s things, and that Parker will give me a box of his nephew’s old papers right there in the parking lot of the A&P.
Knows I will take those papers home and sneak them up to the closet in my room and go through the box during Felicity’s nap, even though a voice in my head screams for me to leave it alone, to let Lark and Mason be happy and quit looking for the fly in the ointment.
Knows I will find something that proves that Mason is a liar—a liar then, and a liar now, and making a fool out of Lark all over again.
And once I know the truth, I can’t un-know it. I can’t turn back time and restore my own innocence, and I can’t sit back and let Lark be tricked by the man who already shattered my too-trusting sister once before.
I don’t want to destroy Lark’s dream, but I don’t want my sister to be destroyed, either. I don’t want Lark to know what it’s like to give everything she has to a man, only to be left alone and devastated when he decides everything isn’t good enough. I don’t want my sister to hurt the way I hurt, the way I’m not sure I will ever completely stop hurting, no matter how much time passes or how many good things come into my life.
I have to tell Lark what I found. I have to show her.
There is no other choice.
By the time I find the evidence I hoped didn’t exist, Lark has already left with Mason for their fifth date. I debate calling her and telling her the truth over the phone, but decide it isn’t right to spring something like that on her when she’s alone with Mason, miles from home, with no one there to back her up if things get messy.
So instead, I send a text, warning Lark that I have some bad news and that she should come home as soon as possible.
And then I stick my phone in my pocket and wait.
Felicity gets up from her nap and we play in the backyard with her toys for over an hour, and I wait. I put on Blue’s Clues and whip up a lemon meringue pie for desert, while Melody makes chicken stir-fry for supper, and wait. I feed Felicity and give her a bath and spread out toys for her on the floor of our room while I fold clothes, and wait.
I read my daughter a bedtime story and put her to bed and go downstairs to read until Lark gets home, but Felicity’s eleven thirty feeding comes and goes and still Lark doesn’t respond to my text.
She doesn’t respond, and she doesn’t come home.
By twelve-thirty, I realize she’s not coming home at all and make my way slowly to bed where I end my day the same way I began it, lying staring at the ceiling, certain something terrible is about to happen.
Chapter 20
Mason
Date Five
The musical—a dark comedy about competitive table tennis that somehow manages to be fun to watch—is much less torturous than I was expecting. The mojitos and appetizers at Damon’s afterward are amazing, and the walk through downtown Atlanta as the street musicians play and the restaurants light up for the night is completely atmospheric.
Not that we need atmosphere.
We’re creating our own atmosphere.
All day long, Lark and I have been drifting through the world in a protective bubble. Nothing bad can trouble or touch us. Not traffic, not the hellish parking situation that led to paying forty dollars to park in a hotel’s garage, not the four-year-old behind us at the play who kept kicking our seats, not even the thunderstorm that blows through around eight o’clock, turning the sky dark just as we’re about to head back to Bliss River.
We’re too happy, too tipsy on mojitos and drunk on each other to let anything bring us down.
“It’s getting pretty nasty out there. Could make the drive home dangerous,” Lark says, eyeing the leaking sky from beneath the parking garage’s overhang. “Think it’s going to keep it up for a while?”
I tighten my arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know. If it gets too bad we can always pull over somewhere between here and there. Get a coffee or something and wait it out.”
“We could.” She hums beneath her breath.
A thinking hum.
“Yes?” I ask, smiling as she turns to look up at me, a mischievous light in her eye.
“I was thinking…” She leans closer, until her lips are only inches from mine and it is hard to think about anything but how much I want to kiss her.
“Yes,” I prompt again, when she lets the silence trail on.
“I was thinking that we’ve already paid for parking at the hotel, so…” She purses her lips. “Well, maybe it would be a good idea if we just went ahead and…got a room.”
“Got a room,” I repeat, wanting to make one hundred percent sure I heard her correctly, that my hopeful ears aren’t playing tricks on me.
She nods. “I’m ready to get a room. Aren’t you?”
“I am completely ready to get a room,” I breathe. “I can’t think of anything I’ve ever wanted more than getting a room with you. Ever.”
“Ever?” She gins wider.
“Ever ever,” I promise as I take her hand and start toward the entrance to the lobby.
A few minutes later, we’re at the front desk being booked into a room on the top floor. Not long after, we’re in the hotel shop buying toothbrushes and toothpaste and condoms.
Condoms. Because we’re finally going to be together. After all the years of dating and waiting and even more years spent living apart from the girl I love, wondering if this dream was ever going to become a reality, wondering if I’d ever be with Lark like this, it’s finally going to happen.