Page 50 of Bed and Breakup (Dial Delights #15)

“I know you are.” I pick up Molly’s right hand and kiss the peak of each knuckle, exhilarated and afraid to reveal what’s been weighing on me for at least the last few days, but realistically since the moment Molly and I made our agreement.

“To be honest, I think I’ve been lying to myself for a long time, that I can walk away from all of this, from you.

” I tuck Molly’s brown and teal locks behind her ears and cup her cheeks and open my heart wide for her, hoping with every cell in my body she’ll feel the same way.

“I don’t want to lose you again, even if it’s not from some freak accident, even if it’s a reasonable decision we’ve made together.

Going to Portland, opening my own restaurant, having my own TV series, I did it all because I thought it would make my life feel more meaningful.

But the whole time we were apart, even if my career was bigger, I felt smaller.

Less whole. I didn’t realize how much of me was missing until I was back here with you, working on the inn, cooking with Jesse.

I don’t want to leave half of my heart in Eureka again. ”

Molly’s lips are parted in surprise, her eyebrows raised. “What are you saying?”

“I want to stay,” I say, confidence in my decision building. “Here. With you.”

“We’re…we’re supposed to meet with Clint and the lawyers in two hours,” Molly says, her voice unsteady.

“Fuck the lawyers,” I blurt out, smiling through the tears still clinging to my cheeks.

“I mean, Danica seems great. And I obviously love Clint. The closing paperwork is ready, but we haven’t signed on the dotted line yet.

Let’s blow them off. Reopen the inn ourselves.

With a team, of course. We’re older now.

We can’t do it alone. Maybe we can convince Caro to come back.

Or maybe Clint can still invest and help us hire someone.

Then you can keep taking commissions, with Eureka as your home base. We can work out the details.”

“But what about your career?” Molly says, inching away from my touch. “Don’t you want to move to a big culinary city and open a new restaurant? How can you give up everything you’ve ever wanted?”

“ You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” I say, simple and sure.

“I didn’t realize it before. I needed to see for myself what I could do, what was out there.

But it’s always been you, Molly. It’s always been us, here, together.

” With a heavy breath, I shift to the terrifying part, where this dream could completely fall apart.

I grab Molly’s hands in mine and look directly into her uncertain but hopeful face as I say, “This is a huge, life-changing choice that involves both of us. Your career, your art, your life away from Eureka Springs, I can’t ask you to give it up.

I know without a doubt this is what I want, but if it’s not what you want, I understa—”

Molly puts her thumb to my lips, stopping me in my tracks.

“I see things differently now too, Robin. As afraid as I was of change, that time apart showed me what I’m capable of.

I didn’t go with you to Portland because I was scared of wanting more, of leaving my safe haven.

But your leaving forced me to be brave. To see new places.

To create new art. Art that’s in museums now.

” She shakes her head as if she still can’t believe it.

“I made art in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma. But it was usually chasing someone else’s vision.

I can make art anywhere. Here, I can keep making it on my own terms.”

I take a jagged breath in. “You mean, you want—”

“—to stay here with you.” A brilliant smile bursts across Molly’s face like sunlight breaking through clouds, and I’m reminded of the first time she smiled at me like this, that day at Home Depot all those years ago. “It’s always been you, Robin. You and me,” she says.

I grab Molly in a passionate kiss, our bodies immediately tangled together.

We get lost kissing each other, like it’s the first time and the millionth time all in one.

When we stop, sunbeams are streaming through the gaps in the mountains.

We lace our fingers together and watch the light shift, listen to the birds sing.

“You know,” Molly says, her voice its own music in my ears, “everything we wanted from our agreement came true. We both have huge career opportunities offered to us. We’ve got a trustworthy friend willing to buy the inn for more money than either of us ever expected to have.

We hashed out what happened and understand why we fell apart.

We have every reason to follow the plan to the end and say goodbye. ”

I freeze, worried Molly is changing her mind. If she does, I think I might crumble to dust right here and spend the rest of my non-life hanging with the Hummingbird Inn ghosts.

Molly gently caresses my cheek, turning my face toward hers. “But we have one reason to blow off the plan and stay here together. The most important reason: because we want to.”

I smile so hard that my cheeks ache. “Fuck the plan.”

—

We write notes to Clint, Keyana, and Danica, brief but sincere apologies for bailing on them at the last minute.

We explain that sometimes love makes you do foolish things.

I tuck them into a basket filled with leftover cookies, chocolate, and marshmallows and drop it off at the front desk of the law office where we were supposed to sign over the deed to the inn and meet Key before our court appearance for the divorce.

Then Molly drives us down a familiar highway.

We turn up the music, belting along to the songs that played on the radio back in 2012, when we first fell for each other.

By the time we arrive at our destination on a narrow gravel road, the sun is fully risen, lighting up the brilliant oranges and yellows and reds of the autumn leaves in the Ozarks.

Molly and I hike to the top of a stone ledge, our hands clasped the whole time, even when it makes moving over uneven ground harder.

We’re wearing our wedding outfits, and I still can’t believe we both held on to them for a decade.

Then again, I guess it makes sense when you consider we’re just a couple of sappy dykes who couldn’t find the nerve to file for divorce all these years.

We find our footing on a dry patch of rock at the top of the rushing waterfall at Lover’s Leap. I try to brush the chilly mist from my face, but it’s a losing battle.

Molly laughs as we both shiver. “This is what we get for being two fools who didn’t figure out we should stay together in August, when the water was warm,” she says.

I shrug. “As long as we’re two fools together, I can handle anything.”

I pull a stray leaf from Molly’s lacy white dress, and she straightens the collar of my tux, my jacket unbuttoned because of my rounder midsection.

We say some words, unplanned but from the heart, about how this time it’s for us.

This time we’ll face our problems side by side, grow together, bloom right here where we’ve decided to put down roots.

And then we leap.