Page 127 of Holding You
DECLAN
I can’t sleep.
I flip the covers off me and grab my computer. I prop myself against the headboard. Might as well check my emails.
I click on one, scan it, then I click on the next and scan that one, too.
Yet, if someone were to walk in here right now and ask me what I just read, I wouldn’t have an answer.
My mind is 100 percent focused on Ruby.
This past week has been torture. I’d hyped myself up all day to talk to her. To tell her that maybe we made a mistake by agreeing to end this in Vegas, but then my mind kept going back to whether or not I could be who she needs, who my company needs, and who my daughter needs all at the same time.
The point of being with someone is to have a partner, right? That person you grow with and who is there for you through the good and the bad. We could be that person for each other, couldn’t we?
Watching her with my parents tonight was a sight I never planned to see anytime soon, but something about the way mymom fawned over her and how Ruby laughed at my dad’s horrible jokes … everything just fits.
I’ve never felt so content before.
It kills me that she’s right upstairs. That in under sixty seconds I could be up there with her. I would have to be quiet, sure, but she’sright there.
I shove my laptop aside and grab my phone, opening up my text thread with Ruby.
Declan:
Are you awake?
The dots appear almost instantly, as if she’d been waiting for me to message her.
Ruby:
Yes. I can’t sleep.
Declan:
Neither can I.
Ruby:
Why not?
I debate whether I should tell her the truth. I don’t want to scare her away. But I’m not about to start whatever this is with a lie.
Declan:
I’m thinking about sneaking up there to see you.
The dots appear and then go away.
Then they appear again and her text is almost instant.
Ruby:
Okay.
That’s all the assurance I need to sneak out of my room.
A couple of the steps creak, but I pause long enough to be sure they don’t wake Susie.
