I cleared my throat. “His name’s Dusty. Dominic got him for me.”
“Dusty,” she murmured, running her hand over his black coat. “It’s a good name.” He rolled onto the ground and presented his belly, and she laughed and rubbed him there for a moment before standing again. I swallowed.
“I’ve read every article about you. I …” She paused and shook her head, looking off in the distance for a moment as tears filled her eyes, “I saved every one of them. I watched the show with you and Wyatt’s family and I … God, I was so scared when I learned what you’d done. Scared but mostly proud. So proud …” Her words dropped away as she licked her lips, stepping closer.
“Thank you.” I felt frozen with nerves, as if I were standing on a precipice, waiting for Ellie to tell me if I was going to fly or if I was going to fall. I didn’t know if she was here to say she was going to stay, and the fear of her leaving again bubbled inside of me. My chest felt tight with desperation and longing. Tell me I’m going to soar, Ellie. Please.
She nodded. “I have so much to tell you. I want to tell you about my mother.” She smiled so slightly, a sad sort of tilting of her lips. “I want to tell you about how much I was loved, and how it caused me to crumble into a thousand tiny pieces to lose that love the way I did.”
She paused, tilting her head, her hair sliding over one shoulder. “I want to tell you all of it, but mostly, I want to tell you how I’ve realized that I spent so much time trying to hold myself together when what I really needed was to break apart. You made it so I was brave enough to do that. And I’m so sorry I had to do it alone, I’m so sorry I caused you pain.”
She took a shaky breath, glancing down for just a moment. “I wanted to come to you in the hospital, so much. But I wasn’t ready then, and I couldn’t see you and then go away again. I couldn’t do that to you, or to me.”
“Eloise,” I said, my voice sounding strangled, filled with all the emotions coursing through my body. “Are you back?”
She blinked, seeming startled. “If you still want me.”
I let out a sound that was part breath but mostly groan and pulled her into my arms, relief and gratitude spilling through every part of my body like warm sunlight. I felt weak with it. “Want you? God, I’ve been waiting for you. I would have waited forever.”
She let out a small sob as she pulled me even closer, burying her face in my neck. “I never stopped loving you, not for one minute, not even for a second. Not ever. I want to love you if you’ll let me, Gabriel. I want to love you with the kind of love you deserve.”
“Let you? Oh God, Eloise. I love you, too. I loved you then, I love you now. I’ll love you forever.”
She gave me a soggy smile, a slight awe-filled laugh before she shook her head slightly. “I’m still a work in progress. I suppose I always will be.”
“We all are, sweetheart. All of us.”
She tilted her head back, and I brought my lips to hers and kissed her as if it were the very first time, taking my time to reacquaint myself with the taste of her—that same sweetness I’d never know how to name even if I tried.
“You’ve been with me all this time,” she whispered between kisses. “Your love, your words, the way you make me feel.” I smiled, kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, her smooth forehead. “I had to …” She whimpered softly as I brought my lips back to hers, her tongue meeting mine for long minutes before she pulled back slightly. “I want you to understand so you’ll forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” I kissed her neck as she let out a shuddery breath.
“It’s just … I had to … oh …” She laughed breathlessly. “Oh God, Gabriel, take me inside.”
I laughed, too, swinging her up into my arms. Dusty started yapping at my heels, running ahead as if to show us the way to the house.
“Wait, the food.” She laughed again.
I bent to it and picked up the string on the pie box and the strap of the cooler with the hand under her knees. Then I stepped carefully through the daffodils, trying not to crush them.
I placed the two items in my hand on the kitchen counter and carried Ellie into the bedroom and set her down, closing the door against Dusty, saying, “Sorry, bud, you’re not allowed to see what’s going to happen in here.” He moaned and I heard the click of his nails on my floors, moving away from my room. Off to destroy one of my shoes most likely, and I couldn’t have cared any less.
Afterward, when Eloise and I finally pulled apart, our limbs languid, our heartbeats calming and our breath returning to normal, I smoothed her hair back and whispered all the words of love I had saved in my heart. I told her how much I’d missed her, and she told me the same.
She spoke of the hurts of her past, the shattering of her heart, but mostly she spoke of healing and how she’d learned that damage is a slow piecing back together.
“Once,” she said, using a finger to trace my cheekbone, “you told me that solid stone is nothing more than sand and pressure and time.” Her hand dropped from my face to lie flat against my chest. “I was the sand, so easy to crumble. You provided the pressure, Gabriel, the holding together, the love. All the confidence you had in me was what I needed in order to take a chance on myself. And then you gave me the most selfless gift of all: time, so I could finally break apart and put myself back together.”
Lying there in the quiet of my room, our naked bodies pressed tightly, I looked into her unguarded eyes and saw the steady strength that had only flickered there before. And, impossibly, I fell even more deeply in love with her. I heard the same whisper in my soul that I’d heard the first time we’d met: She’s mine.
Mine to care for. Mine to love.
Later, when we emerged from the bedroom, we walked into the kitchen to find the lemon meringue pie splattered on the floor, a torn-open pie box, and one unremorseful-looking puppy. I froze, turning to Ellie, who gripped the sheet to her chest and bent forward in laughter. “I can make another one,” she said.
I pulled her into my arms and we danced for a moment, me in my boxers and her wrapped in a sheet, the floor smeared with pie, and I loved her to the depths of my soul. “Be my wife,” I murmured in her ear.
She pulled back to look at me, her eyes soft, the glimmer of a smile on her lips. “Because I can make lemon meringue pie?”
I laughed. “Well, no, but it doesn’t hurt.”
She laughed, too, wrapping her arms around my neck and pulling me close. “I’m in nursing school.”
I tilted my head, surprised but happy. “Then be a nurse and my wife.”
She smiled. “Shouldn’t we wait just a little while? Shouldn’t we give it more time?”
“I don’t need more time. Do you?”
She tilted her head, her eyes filled with love and honesty, and she shook her head, the expression on her face happy and perhaps a little bit amazed.
“No,” she said. “No.” She brought her hand to my face, her smile tender. “You’ve always been so sure about me. Thank you for that gift. Thank you for waiting for me to be sure about myself.”
I kissed her, my heart feeling so full. Outside the window, the daffodils were a carpet of yellow, and this time, Eloise was in my arms, and it was as if my arms had been made for her and her alone. I no longer regretted the years I’d felt too terrified to be close to someone. In my solitude, in my fear, I’d somehow saved myself for Eloise. She was my one and only. Together we would carve our future. And for the first time in so very long, I was truly home.