Page 67

Her eyes opened wide.
“Sorry. I don’t mean right away. Some day.”
“Is that what you want?”
I leaned back so I could look into her eyes. “Is it not what you want?”
“I haven’t thought about it. It seemed so unlikely.”
“What about now? Does it seem more likely?”
21
BUTTERFLY
Brand scrubbed his face with his hand. “Look, forget I said anything. It isn’t my intention to put pressure on you. What I meant was some day. It isn’t a conversation we should have in the middle of the night.”
“I’m going to confess something to you.”
He leaned farther back and turned to his side. I did the same.
“What I have thought about is how devastated I’d be if you and I weren’t together and you found someone else to have a family with, and there I’d be, at family gatherings, unmarried, childless, miserable, sad, and alone.” Rapid-fire words spat out of me faster than my brain could keep up.
“Whoa. Where did that come from?”
“Extreme insecurity.”
Brand brought his hand to my face and cupped my cheek. “I love you, Penelope Ramsey. There will be no finding someone else for either of us. No family that isn’t with each other.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Wanna bet?”
I rolled my eyes and laughed at how much he sounded like a little boy.
“I’m serious. No one else for me. No one else for you.”
I stared into his eyes, feeling as though there was something more he wasn’t saying. He was right, though; this wasn’t the kind of conversation we should have in the middle of the night.
“Okay,” I whispered, snuggling back into him. “If that’s the case, we should sleep.”
He murmured his agreement and shifted to his back so I could rest my head on his chest.
“So tell me about this new friend of yours,” Brand said the next morning as we sat in the garden, warming our hands on big mugs of coffee.
“We met in the park. I saw her sketching, asked if I could see one, and before I knew it, I was at the art supply store with Tara, buying paints and canvases and brushes. Kind of like what I did for your birthday, but nowhere near as much or…you know…as much.”
“Do you mean less extravagant?”
“She’s just getting started. At least, I hope she is. It would be a shame for her kind of talent to go to waste.”
“I’d be interested in seeing her work.”
“She’s…I’m not sure how to put it. Skittish, maybe? It’s like she’s always looking over her shoulder.”
“Maybe she’s hiding from someone. Although a park might not be the best place for it.”
“You might be onto something, though. It really is like she’s afraid of something. Or someone.”