Page 49 of The Best Wild Idea (Off-Limits #3)

Juliet

The letter.

How could I have forgotten the letter that would be waiting?

We’d gone straight to Nonna Lisi’s house from the airport. I hadn’t even thought about the letter that was waiting for me at the hotel all afternoon. A cold wave of guilt crashes through me, like ice rushing to my core.

“Thank you,” I stammer, then grab Grant’s letter off the counter, suddenly avoiding Silas’ gaze.

He’s frozen beside me.

I lick my bottom lip before biting down, staring at the envelope in my hands.

My mind’s blank, like a dank fluorescent light that’s about to go out, buzzing loudly, ringing harshly in both ears. I feel stupid and embarrassed and angry with myself that just the sight of Grant’s letter makes me feel like I’m gasping in the dark beneath the weight of it.

Silas quickly swipes the keys off the counter. We somehow make it to the nearby elevator and begin riding up in silence.

We should have stopped at that Bed and Breakfast.

We should have allowed ourselves to just live in that moment, consequences be damned. To be simply two people with no past and no future, making one uncomplicated memory on a sidewalk in Italy together.

If only it were that easy.

I pretend to stare down at my feet the whole way up to our suite, but instead, I’m watching his hand hang empty by his side and I scream at myself to just grab it.

Hold it.

Hold on to him before he retreats back into himself, too.

Nothing has changed from just a moment ago. I still want him. And I hope he still wants me. But I don’t move.

The elevator door chirps cheerfully when it slides open, directly leading into our penthouse suite on the top floor.

He clears his throat and holds out his arm, to let me out first. I walk a few feet into the suite, then close my eyes before planting my feet, not going another step further.

All the way back to the hotel, I’d kissed Grant’s best friend while his next letter was waiting for me behind the counter here.

Three hundred and seventy-some days now, just waiting for me to pick it up.

What kind of woman am I?

The kind of woman that’s chosen to go on , a light voice answers back in my head.

Nonna Lisi’s words echo next.

You find the best things in the most messy parts of your life.

The elevator door slides shut behind us.

Heavy silence fills the room.

Without a word, Silas walks toward the gilded bar in the corner near a pile of our luggage to pour himself a nightcap. He looks stressed, exhausted, like just seeing that letter has torn him up just as much as it has me.

“Want one?”

He holds up a glass, but doesn’t wait for an answer. Grabbing a crystal decanter filled with some type of alcohol, he splashes a good amount inside, then offers it to me.

“No,” I tell him, firmly.

He takes a gulp, puffing his cheeks out before swallowing, closing his eyes as it likely burns down his throat.

I shake my head, realizing I do want some. “Shit, I mean, yes.”

He throws me a faint smile, then pours another splash into the same glass and holds it out to me.

I try to take the glass from him but my hand envelops his instead. Our fingers overlap, draped over the tumbler, and I pause, waiting for him to give up the glass, but he doesn’t let it go.

I study him, his eyes, which at this moment are saying far more than either of us are willing to say out loud.

He takes a step closer, his lips twitching at the sides in that familiar way they always do, like he knows something I don’t.

A secret he isn’t willing to share, but one he loves to keep for himself.

Then he blinks and a thousand memories flood in.

Memories of us that never belonged to just the two of us, and I realize we’re both haunted by a ghost that’ll never stand here between us again.

Not anymore.

Not ever.

And it doesn’t seem fair to pretend we’re all here when there will only be two of us from now on.

He turns. “I’ll head to bed for the night,” he says, suddenly relinquishing the glass to me. Sliding his fingers out from mine. “Give you time to read that alone.”

He taps the letter in my hand, then kisses me lightly on the cheek before walking toward one of the two bedroom doors.

“No.”

Between the two of us, I’m probably more startled to hear my own voice come out before any of my thoughts are fully formed.

But I won’t stop. Not now. If I live the rest of my life in a space stemming from pure logic, formed only from my past, then I’m going to get to the end with a drawer full of regret.

He turns to face me.

“I don’t want to read it tonight, Si. I don’t want—” My voice cracks as I drop the letter onto the coffee table, taking a step away from it before shifting my eyes up to meet his.

“I was feeling so happy after tonight. Hopeful, really, for the first time in forever. I don’t want to risk that going away if I read it right now. ”

I swallow hard and Silas takes one small step away from his room.

“Jules, I don’t want you to do something you might regret in the morning. This is too important. You are too important to get caught up in something we might not be ready for.”

I step away from the letter, still sealed, knowing that I’m more sure now than ever.

“I know why Grant sent us on this trip. I know why he pushed us back into each other’s lives.

He knew that I’d need you, as much as you needed me.

I guarantee that, as crazy as it sounds, he saw all this unfolding exactly like this.

” I shake my head, knowing in my heart that I’m right.

“You should see his letters, Si. They’re all about you .

They aren’t just love letters to me. They’re love letters to us .

The us from before . It’s all about your friendship with him, and mine with you.

If you’d read them, you’d understand why there’s no doubt in my mind that this was always the way it was meant to be.

He wanted me to know that you’d be there for me.

That you were always going to be there for me. ”

I close the gap between us and he grabs me the second I get to him, holding my face between his hands, kissing me more desperately than he had out on the sidewalk and all the way here.

I shove his jacket off and it falls to the floor, then kick my shoes onto the carpet without breaking the connection between us.

“Jules,” he pants, pulling me back by the elbows. Concern and hunger fill his eyes. “Are you sure you want this?”

“Yes,” I tell him. My face morphs into a grin. Then I pull him toward me. “Less talking,” I whisper.

I don’t want to talk.

I don’t want to think.

I just want to get completely lost in this exact moment with this exact man. The one that feels more like home than anything else in the whole world. The man that somehow brought me back to myself.

It isn’t just the familiarity I’ve felt with him since the first second I sat in his car outside my house in Boston. Free to be angry and tired and moody and finally — after every other emotion fizzled out — free to be alive .

It’s the way he’s made me feel every step of this crazy journey we’ve been on.

Like something in his eyes helps me remember that I’m beautiful, and adventurous, and always enough.

I love how his eyes always make their way back to mine, whether we’re in the middle of the Spanish sea, or standing across the flour-covered counter at Nonna Lisi’s, or during each takeoff and landing across the aisle between us while Andy pretends not to see the way he watches me.

I love the look he gave me in the seconds before I rolled from the plane at thirteen thousand feet, screaming above the turquoise lakes of Interlaken.

We’ve been all over the map, but we’ve always found each other’s eyes in everything from chaos to joy to arguments to gut-wrenching moments, and everything in between. Silas is my home away from home, and the friend I’ve missed so, so much.

He’s not who he was. Now, different from the man I loved as my friend back then, before everything that happened. But somehow, he’s better. Better now than he ever was before.

And, thanks to Grant’s letters, I know that he’s always been the man who, unbeknownst to me, would stay up all night just to fan a fire if he knew it’d keep me safe.

He’s always been the guy cast behind the scenes, but never stolen the show. Never allowed himself to overstep the invisible boundary following whatever ridiculous coin toss they had over me a decade ago.

I want Silas . This Silas. All of Silas.

And I don’t want whatever is in that letter to get in the way of this moment any more than it already has.

“I know you wanted a chance with me back when you flipped that coin with Grant,” I whisper.

Then I press my lips against his. “And I know it was forever ago. And maybe you changed your mind about wanting me. But I want you.” I watch his eyes flicker, hoping for any fragment of an answer to flash behind them.

“This might be messy. But if Nonna Lisi was right, then messy can end up being okay. It can end up being more than okay. Right?”

The green pools of his eyes dart back and forth, studying mine, making sure this is everything it should be before kissing me again. The sheer intensity of his self-control is making me lose mine all over again.

“I’ve never wanted anything more in my life,” he tells me. “But I can’t forget that—”

I interrupt him before he can finish. “Then just think of me as another girl — begging you to take her,” I whisper. I don’t want either one of us to say his name right now. Not tonight. Not when I’m feeling so desperate to be right here. Fully present, and not in the past.

I try to kiss him again, but his lips brush against mine as he answers. “You have never been just another girl,” he says in a way that makes my knees go weak. “You have only ever been the girl. The only one I ever wanted.”

He rubs the warm pad of his thumb across my lips, and I bite down gently, catching one of his thumbs between my teeth before releasing it back to him with a smile.

“I have wanted you since the day I met you,” he says, still holding on. Then he presses his forehead against mine and kisses me softly. So gently that stars begin spinning behind my eyes. “And believe me when I say that you will never, ever be just another girl .”