Page 48 of Back to December
Marriage. Sunshine. Comfort.
The kind of forever I used to call impossible.
I have to figure out who Laila Mitchell is.
He wants a wife and the life that comes with it—I have to start my whole career over, because it’s all attached to her. He’sliteralsunshine. He’s golden light spilling through the clouds, and I’m the epitome of a dark and rainy day. He’s comfortable in his life—his family, his job—and all I can feel right now is pain.
Deep, aching pain that nothing is what I believed it to be.
I don’t know if I can protect him from my mother, or if she even cares. I hope that’s a worry that doesn’t even exist—borrowing trouble, as Luke’s Gran would say.
But I can protect him fromme, and the maelstrom my life has become in a blink.
“You’re scared,” he says after a prolonged silence.
“Yes,” I answer honestly. “But that’s not all of it, Holden. You deserve someone who isn’t still flinching at ghosts.”
“Why are you trying to tell me what I deserve, Laila? Maybe I want your ghosts. And every flinch they cause.”
“You don’t want these ghosts,” I say, firmerthis time.
His grip tightens on me, just a little. Like he knows.
“Then we’ll hire ghost hunters, or ghostbusters, or whoever we need to flush them out. I’m here for the mess, remember? Filter-free life with you.”
I laugh once, the sound catching in your chest. “Holden, my mother?—”
“I know.” His eyes soften. “She burns what she can’t own. But I’m not kindling.”
The wind stirs the trees above us, scattering gold leaves across his shoulders. He doesn’t brush them off.
“I just need time,” I whisper. “I’m so lost and confused and hurt…”
He nods, jaw tightening. “Take it then, honey. Whatever you need.”
It should make it easier. It doesn’t.
I know what he’s not saying; let me help you figure it out. Let me carry some of the load. Let me hold your hand while we wander a few moonlit paths. We’ll find our way eventually.
But I don’t know how to do any of that.
And most of all, he doesn’t deserve more of this. I’ve been dragging him along in my mess for over a decade now.
“I want to make one thing clear,” he says after a beat. “I know what you’re doing. No matter what happens, it was all worth it to me. One weekend a year, pretending to be married, the last ten days—being with you. It was worth it. And I know you don’t believe me when I say that, so I’ll wait until you do.”
My throat tightens. “What if I don’t know how to believe you, Holden? What if it’s too broken to fix? IfI’mtoobroken?”
“Then we take the pieces and make something new, honey.”
There’s his sunshine again, warm and golden in my dark clouds.
He kisses me again, slow and steady, like he’s pressing a promise into my bones.
Like maybe I’ll finally believe him this time.
He pulls back first, forehead resting against mine. “You know where to find me when you come home,” he murmurs. “Four a.m. The lights are always on.”
The glow from the reception lights flickers across his face as he steps away, and I realize the ache between us isn’t an ending.
