Page 51

Eden

I ’m ordering fabric online when Rhys walks into the shop.

I haven’t seen him since four nights ago, when I told him I didn’t think we could work.

Since then, I’ve clung to the feeling I wrapped around myself. Strong. Safe. Like impenetrable armor. No one else can make me safe—not mother, not father, not grandmother, not husband, not fiancé, and definitely not…whatever Rhys is. Only I can make myself safe .

I can refuse to set myself up to be left again.

“Hey,” he says.

I look up.

He’s beautiful. In another era he would have been an actual warrior instead of a fighter for marital justice. He would have had a sword in a scabbard and a dagger at his calf, but he would have worn exactly that same expression— Don’t fuck with me .

Despite myself, despite all my resolve, I shiver and my body warms, and against all good sense, I want him to be my warrior. The man who’ll fight for me .

And that’s exactly what I can’t want, it’s exactly what I need to walk away from.

I realize I’ve reflexively picked up my rotary cutter, the blade winking in a shaft of morning sunlight, and I set it down again.

He doesn’t actually have a sword. I don’t need to literally keep myself safe from him.

I just need to not fall for whatever speech he’s about to give me.

He went to law school to learn how to get people to do what he wants them to.

That’s okay. I went to the school of fucking hard knocks to learn how not to set myself up for pain.

Rhys scowls. “I don’t like how we left things the other night.

” He crosses his arms. There’s nothing soft in his expression, nothing soft in the set of his shoulders or the determination on his face.

“You said you didn’t think it could work between us, and I let you walk away.

That’s not the man I want to be. That’s not the man I’m going to be. ”

My stupid, hopeful heart beats halfway out of my chest.

I want this. I want him. So much.

Somewhere along the way, I let myself fall in love with him. I don’t know if it was when he cooked me dinner or suggested we stop at the quilt show or booked me plane tickets to Sioux Falls or bought me frog slippers—or when he let me take him apart.

It was probably way before that, actually. It was probably when he set the cowboy hat on my head on the morning of my wedding and led me out of the building with no questions asked, doing what I needed even though it was messy and inconvenient for him.

What if…?

What if that’s exactly who he is?

What if it’s not?

“There’s someone I want you to see,” he says. “Can I bring him in?”

My mind flashes to all sorts of possibilities, none of which make sense. One of his brothers. Paul. Teller—but that makes even less sense than the other options.

“Stay there.” He points.

A moment later the door chimes, and then again, and then he’s standing there, a leash in his hand?—

A leash?

He drops the leash, and the creature on the other end of it bounds forward—medium-sized, with curly red blond–and–white–and–black splotches and spots and floppy ears and a snout that’s blunt enough to suggest some bulldog or pug or boxer in his heritage.

“Milo!”

I fall to my knees, and the bundle of loving mutt-y energy, my baby boy, my darling Milo, jumps up, licking my face, panting his joy.

He licks tears off my face, and I look up at Rhys. “How…?”

He grins down at me. “I went back to New York yesterday. Had a long talk with Teller. I reminded him that sometimes in the heat of battle, we fight for things out of spite that we don’t actually want as much as the other person does.

And I told him that I’d gotten to know you a bit and it was clear to me that Milo meant a lot to you…

and that I thought Milo might be a lot happier living in one place year-round and that Teller might be happier not pouring so much money into dog-walking and dog-sitting while he works and travels on his ridiculous schedule. ”

“You didn’t!”

He nods. “And he agreed that perhaps Milo would be happier with some space to run around in the backyard of a little house in Rush Creek, Oregon, than cooped up in a New York apartment. So he signed custody back over to you.”

“Rhys…” I can barely manage his name through my happy tears.

“Just so you know,” he says sternly, “this isn’t a grand gesture. I don’t believe in grand gestures.”

I snort. “Are they like jumping spiders or rattlesnakes?”

“More like cotton candy,” he says. “Pretty but not very satisfying. But this isn’t one.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s just setting right something I wish I’d been able to do differently. Restoring order.”

That makes me smile.

“I did think about grand gestures a lot. I can tell you all the ideas I considered and dismissed. Kidnapping you on a big road trip, buying the shop next door to yours so you can expand, strong-arming Paul into giving you the condo.”

That makes me smile. “I don’t hate any of those,” I say, still kneeling beside Milo and soaking up his sloppy kisses and puppy breath, my hands buried in his fur, my heart beating nearly out of my chest with joy.

“They’re all still on the table,” Rhys says.

“Just say the word. The reason I decided not to do any of those is because I get it . I get why you don’t want to jump into this and why you can’t trust it.

You’ve been dealt a shit hand. No one you’ve ever cared about has stayed, and the one person who did wasn’t exactly warm and loving to you.

I wouldn’t be able to trust me, either. And here’s the thing: I want you to be safe, which means I don’t want you to just trust whatever performative alpha male bullshit I dish up for you.

I don’t want to fly you to Paris and give you a huge rock and tell you I’ll never leave you, because I don’t want to seduce you. I want to deserve you.”

I almost make a little helpless noise, because holy shit , he’s good. Like, I had NO IDEA he was that good. I feel lucky he didn’t use the closing-argument magic on me sooner because I would have folded like a fat quarter on display.

Instead I shorten up Milo’s leash, stand up, take a deep breath, and wrap my armor tighter around myself.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he says.

“I’m not asking you to say anything or promise anything.

You don’t even have to agree to see me ever again.

I just wanted to tell you that I took a job at my friend Matias’s law firm in Bend and I’ll be working there as soon as I wrap things up in New York.

The events of the last few weeks have made me realize I don’t love who I’ve become, and I want to feel like I can look myself in the eye in the mirror.

Plus, three thousand miles is a long way to come once a week for family dinners. ”

I snort at that.

“I guess what I’m saying is that I’m here and I’m not leaving.”

I want so many things. I want to take off the armor and wrap him around me instead. I want to let him in, all the way in, and keep him there as long as he’ll stay.

I want it to be like it was in the car, just us, moving forward together.

And on the other hand, I want never to have gotten in that car and discovered that it was possible to love so much more deeply than I’d ever loved before.

That it was possible to want someone so fiercely that any loss I’d ever experienced would pale in comparison to how much it would hurt to lose him.

“If I tell you to leave, will you?” I ask.

I see the hit register, a sudden flash of pain behind his eyes, but he does an admirable job of shuttering them. “If you tell me to leave you alone, I’ll stay away. But I’m in Rush Creek to stay, Eden. I’m here for the long haul.”

Our eyes are locked on each other’s faces. There’s quiet resignation on his as he waits for my verdict.

I don’t know what’s on mine. I hope I’m not as transparent as I feel—terrified and hopeful at the same time.