Page 86 of Time After Time

He wants us to date, start again, and this time with the knowledge that we already love each other. I know I love him—have since the start—but I’m not so sure about him. I don’t know why he’s pursuing me, us.

It’s confusing me.

As an astrophysicist, I spend most of my timeconstructing models to explain why things behave the way they do. I look for patterns. Evidence. Proof.

Ransom is chaos. Messy, painful, unquantifiable chaos.

But in the past few days, he’s been doing something unexpected. He’s been persistent and patient, even when I’ve been prickly and distant. And Ransom Marchand is not a patient man. He doesn’t write apology notes. He doesn’t apologize quite so much. He definitely doesn’t remember the exact chocolate I loved from a tucked-away shop in San Francisco five years ago, and somehow deliver it across an ocean.

This version of him—one who listens, who doesn’t push, who owns what he did and doesn’t try to spin it into something more palatable—isn’t the man who broke my heart.

And maybe that’s the point.

I’m not stupid. I’m not a woman who leaps blindly just because someone says they love her.

But I am someone who can recognize when a man is trying, really trying, in the way that counts—not with grand gestures or perfect speeches, but with uncomfortable honesty and inconvenient vulnerability.

He’s showing me who he is now, and not once has he asked for a reward in return.

He’s just…there. Every morning. Every evening. Steady as the rotation of the earth, reminding me that he’s not running anymore.

So maybe the question isn’t whether he’s done enough to deserve me.

Maybe the question is whether I’m willing to let go of the version of him I stored away—filed under painful, unsalvageable—and see what’s standing in front of me now.

But it’s been a handful of days…shouldn’t it take longer to come to such important decisions?

I’m standing by the gazebo when I hear footsteps crunching behind me. But they’re nothis. They’re slower.

Papa.

He catches up, gently falling into step beside me. “Too much wine?”

I laugh. “Not hardly. I was going to stroll up to the woods.”

“May I join you?” he asks.

I nod.

We walk in silence toward the edge of the woods where fairy lights fade and starlight begins.

“You looked like you may be forgiving him in the cellar.” He’s not judging. Just stating.

I wrap my arms around myself. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Good,” he quips. “Because if you knew exactly what you were doing, it wouldn’t be love.”

I blink at him.

“Want to know about the time I messed up with your mother?” he offers.

“We know about all the times you messed up with her. She tells us.”

He grins, and then sobers. “Not this one. This one hurt her.”

I glance at him, surprised. “We’d been together for a couple of years. I got jealous after a party. I accused her of flirting with a mutual friend. Jealousy. Ego. I was…awful. Said some horrible things to her. She didn’t talk to me for sixty days.”

I don’t ask him what he said. That’s private, but it must’ve been pretty bad if she shut him out like that. My parents love each other. No question about it. But no relationship is up and up.