Page 63 of Love, Morgan

Her breath caught and she pressed her lips together, and I knew she wanted it too.

“My dad would always tell me that when he thought I was being too impatient as a kid,” she said, holding tight to my fingers and setting my whole body on fire.

I laughed. “I can’t imagine you being impatient.”

“I’m being impatient right now.” She looked away as if embarrassed by her own emotions. I didn’t want her to be. I liked every one of her emotions, I wanted to see them all.

“That’s okay, though, because I made you get dressed up and am kidnapping you for a surprise evening.”

“I don’t think it counts when I’m going willingly.”

“Details.” I smiled warmly at her. She looked so perfect tonight. “So, what were you impatient about as a kid?”

“Oh.” She looked down, thinking. “Mostly things like what I was getting for Christmas, where we were going on vacation, where we were going on our special monthly hangouts.”

“Special monthly hangouts?”

She nodded. “After his wife left—well, my mom, I guess—he started this thing where he’d take me out for a special treat every month. Just the two of us. It was always just the two of us, but that was a special just the two of us. He’d never tell me where we were going, and I’d always get impatient on the way. It was our thing.”

I watched her, tracking the whirlwind of emotions across her face. She’d told me a lot about her dad in the last few days, a lot about their life together, but there was a coldness I’d never seen on her when she talked about his ex. A soft, heartbroken pain for her father, and a sweet, sentimental happiness when she talked about their special treats.

She wasn’t cold or closed off in her videos, but, when you got to see her up close like this, it quickly became apparent how much of herself she kept locked down when she was being The Pretty Gift. She was so much bigger than she permitted herself to be. I wanted to tell her it was okay for her to be everything she was, that she was allowed to be full and loud and real.

“You don’t think of her as your mom?” I asked tentatively. She’d mentioned her dad a lot, but never a mother. I’d simply assumed she wasn’t in the picture. It wasn’t like mine was.

“Not really?” She scrunched her face adorably. When she let her guard down, her face was possibly the most expressive one I’d ever seen. “Like, I know she is. She just wasn’t around for most of my life, so she just feels like a name on a piece of paper, someone I’ve never even met.”

“You were young when she left?”

“Yeah, just a couple of years old. I don’t remember her at all.” She shrugged. “My dad… It was really hard on him. From what he says, they had a good relationship up until that last year. But then, she half destroyed him. He kept going, mostly for me, but it took him a while to find himself again.”

“I’m glad he did.”

“Me too.” She smiled. “He’s a really great dad, and it’s always just been him and me.”

“He never dated anyone else?”

“No. Never had any interest in it.” She shot me a cautious, sidelong look. “I wonder if it’s kind of like your thing, you know? A terrible experience with someone doing things to him he didn’t like, so now he just distances himself from it all.”

I nodded, unsure where the knot in my stomach had come from. It explained a lot about why she’d gotten it so easily, why she hadn’t pushed back on my life or my logic. She’d seen it first hand, what relationships did to people when they weren’t healthy, and she’d seen someone make decisions for what they needed in the aftermath of that.

She was a really good person.

“Ms. Franklin, Ms. Engle,” an unfamiliar voice called, interrupting the moment just in time before the emotions became unbearable.

I looked up to see a tall gentleman and an absolutely ripped woman waiting for us, smiling.

“I’m Mohammed, and this is Peni,” he said, gesturing to himself and the woman beside him. “We’ll be taking care of you tonight.”

“Morgan?” Iona whispered, equal parts excited and confused.

“Your ride awaits,” Mohammed said, waving his hand out towards a boat waiting at the water’s edge.

“We’re taking a boat?” Iona asked eagerly.

“Apparently we are,” I said, smiling back at her and squeezing her hand.

“You didn’t know?” She laughed, the sound so free and easy, despite our conversation.

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