Page 85 of Accidental Groom

She groans at the shift in conversation. “Fine. I mean, I wasn’t going to say anything…”

“Oh god,” I say, straightening, my eyes blowing wide. “You’re pregnant too.”

“What? No! El,” she laughs. “That’s not it. But Iamseeing someone.”

My smile bloomsfast. “You are?”

“Maybe…”

“And?”

“And she’samazing,” she gushes. The pronoun doesn’t surprise me — it never would have. Sarah’s been out to me as bisexual for at least ten years. Mom and Dad, though… “Her name is Tamsin, she’s terrifying in a hot way, she has a full sleeve tattoo of Victorian poisonous plants, and she owns a bookstore that doubles as a bar.”

“Ofcourseshe does,” I laugh.

“I know. I think I’m completely in love with her.”

I narrow my eyes at the window. “How long have you been seeing her?”

“Two weeks.”

“Of course you have,” I laugh. “I take it you haven’t told Mom and Dad, then.”

“Fuck, no. Not yet, at least. I’ll wait for that disappointment.”

————

Long after the sun has set and the rain has calmed, I wander into the main house. I tell myself that I’m going to raid his cupboard and fridge for something for dinner, but it only serves to get me out of the door of the cottage and into Highcourt Hall. I know damn well that’s not why I’m here.

The house is dim and quiet. The only clue that he’s even home is the fact that he hasn’t texted me to tell me he was leaving, and I find myself wandering past the kitchen and up the stairs.

But it’s soquiet.

There’s no sound of a television playing in the distance or the quiet clack of a keyboard. There’s no voice trailing from aphone call or a video meeting, no sound of a shower or elliptical running.

But the door on the end is ajar, just enough to show a crack of light.

He’d mentioned that room to me months ago. He’d pointed it out when he’d walked me through the upstairs area of the east wing.

“That one was Geraldine’s private room. I’ve pretty much left it as it was.”

I hesitate, but step forward, just enough to look through the crack. By the window, a familiar head of silvered hair is visible over the back of the wingback chair, a glass of something amber in his hand. There’s a photo on the small side table next to him, and although I can’t see it very well, I can tell there’s white in it. A lot of it. A wedding portrait, maybe.

Shit.

I watch him a moment too long. The slope of his shoulders, the way he stares at the same point in space like it holds answers or like he’s replaying things in his mind — it makes my stomach turn. There’s grief in his stillness, and I’m sitting here staring at him, trying to muster up the courage to talk to him abouther. It’s twisted. It feels wrong.

The courage I’d mustered dissolves. This isn’t the moment. Not here, not when I already feel like a ghost pressing into someone else’s life?—

“I can hear you breathing.”

Chapter 30

Harry

Idon’t come to this room often.

Not because I avoid it — or maybe not only for that reason. It’s more than the space exists in its own kind of emotional vacuum. It’s preserved. It’s too intact, too frozen in time to feel like it belongs in the present tense.