Page 333 of Wild Card 13

The words landed so gently I almost missed how much they changed.

Lucy kept looking at the storm. “I know that’s probably a lot.”

“It’s exactly enough.”

She turned her face toward me then, and I knew she had heard everything I had not said yet. Lucy had always been good at that. Hearing the words under the words. Seeing the shape of a thing before I had figured out how to hold it in my hands.

I set my wine on the coffee table.

Lucy’s gaze dropped to my hand, then came back to my face.

The fire cracked softly. Dottie huffed in her sleep. The storm kept the rest of the world out.

I had spent so much of my life wanting more from Lucy and being terrified that wanting made me dangerous to her peace. Wanting her attention. Her forgiveness. Her trust. Her mornings. Her hand in mine where people could see. Her place beside me at the end of the day.

For years, I had thought the second chance was the impossible part.

It wasn’t.

The impossible part was learning what to do with it once I had it.

How to stand there with both hands open.

How to love her without trying to outrun the fear that I might lose her.

How to trust that I did not have to earn every breath she took beside me until I collapsed from the effort.

She had chosen me.

Again and again, in all the small ways that mattered most.

She had chosen coffee.

She had chosen the dock.

She had chosen dinner at my table.

She had chosen my terrible cabinet system and my dead basil plant and a dog towel by the door.

She had chosen me with an overnight bag.

“Lucy.” I reached for her hand. “Move in with me.”

Lucy did not blink. She did not ask if I was sure. She looked at me like she had been waiting for me to catch up.

Then she smiled, small and crooked and so perfectly her that it made my chest ache. “Okay.”

I stared at her.

She laughed once. “What?”

“That was fast.”

“You asked.”

“I did.”

“And I answered.”