Page 154 of Here & There

“Damn it,” he says. He peels it off, and the next time he appears next to me, he’s bare chested.

I finally calm down.

“Better?” he asks.

He’s not asking about the clothes.

“Better,” I whisper.

“I love you, Bryony Shelby Jones.”

I nod, the tears coming again. “I love you too, Alasdair.”

Chapter 37

Mac

For a two-hundred-and-good-amount-of-change-pound man, I feel light as a goddamn feather. I don’t even care that people are staring at me as I walk down the street in this skintight outfit. I’ve got Shelby on my arm.

Shortly after that moment in her room, she got that look on her face again—the worried one—and I was sure things were going to slip again. Hearing her sob like that—it ripped the seams from my newly patched heart.

“Mac,” she said, “this doesn’t solve our problem of what to do about our future.”

But relief flooded through me when I realized that was all it was. “Come here,” I said, grinning and getting her up. “I have a plan for that.”

We walk to her office through her little neighborhood, and I soak it in as if I’m here for the first time. Because, in a way, I am. I look at the shops and the leafy trees and the diversity of people in a way that isn’t just fleeting, as a tourist, but like it could be home for me too.

Not that I’m giving up on Redbeard.

“Finally,” Nate says when we arrive at Visionary Consulting. Annie’s there too, and Stu, to Shelby’s abject shock. “What? I know my way around a city block,” Stu gripes.

Annie explains Stu’s part in the plan, including the part about me buying Stu’s house all those years ago.

“Sure doesn’t look like it much anymore,” Stu says.

“The bones are all there,” I say defensively. “And the floors, and the banister, and the layout.”

Stu waves a hand.

“Mac,” Deanie says. “Can we focus on the job at hand?”

“Right.” I walk over to the whiteboard I bought this morning at the giant office supply store. “You know I could have bought this at two a.m.? You really can get anything you want at any time in the city.”

“Who the hell needs office supplies at two in the morning?” Stu asks.

“Beats me,” Nate says.

Deanie, Annie, and Shelby exchange amused smiles. City girls.

But when I turn the board around, Shelby gasps.

“Nate helped me with this,” I say. “And Annie.”

“Oh my God, it’s a murder board,” Deanie says.

“What?” Stu asks, confused.

Shelby laughs, looking close to tears again. Only this time, it doesn’t rip my heart out to see it.

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