Surprise lights her eyes. “How did you know?”
I don’t want to get into that, but the idea of these three women staying on that tiny boat makes me grin. “All three of you in, like what, three hundred square feet of livable space?”
“I know, believe me, I know.” She shrugs and wanders down the aisle. Since she doesn’t seem to be trying to escape me, I pick up the shortcake and beer and wander with her. “But as long as we’re together, I’ll be happy.”
The words hang between us. Words I’d said to her several times near the end of our relationship. I’d been willing to leave my family and go wherever she went, but in the end, she didn’t even ask me to come.
Her gaze darts to the dessert in my arms, and she smirks. “You need shortcake to go with your beer?”
“No, but Dad does.”
Her expression instantly goes soft. “Aw, you guys still do Sunday night dinner?”
“Yeah, but it’s a lot more crowded now with kids and husbands.”
“Yeah?”
We’re walking along the back row of the store, past the butcher toward the produce. “All three of my sisters are married, and they’ve got six kids between them.”
Her face opens in shock. “Oh my gosh. That’s a lot of family.”
“And it’s about to get even bigger,” I say, setting up the real shocking news. “They’re all pregnant.”
Her jaw drops a second before she starts laughing. Like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, her face lights up, and her laugh rolls through my body like an earthquake.
“Oh my God,” she says. “That’s got to be—”
“Chaos. Complete chaos.”
“How is everyone?”
“They’re good.”
“Your parents?”
I nod. “Healthy, happy grandparents.”
“I bet.” Her smile fades into something more subdued. “Are you married?”
I snort at the idea to cover my disappointment over all my failed relationships. “No one will have me.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“You?” I ask, tightening my abs for the mule kick when she says yes.
She smirks. “No one will have me.”
I chuckle. “I highly doubt that.”
Silence falls between us. She’s holding my gaze, like she wants to say something. Or maybe she’s just trying to read me the way I’m trying to read her. But the air between us is supercharged with electricity. I should walk away. I really should. But, God help me, I can’t. I just want to stand here in her sphere. I just want to look at her and catalog everything that’s stayed the same, everything that’s changed.
She smells different, less flower, more spice, but those freckles still pepper her nose and cheeks, the ones that were almost invisible when she arrived at the lake in June and so dark by the time she left in September, I could count every one.
I find my eyes drawn to a pale scar on her temple, and before I can think about it, my fingers slide over the imperfection. “What happened here?”
“Oh…” Her gaze drops to my chest, but she doesn’t move away from my touch. “Accident. Cyclone, actually. Long story.”
A loose strand of hair flutters with her shallow, quickening breaths, and widening pupils darken her eyes. I’m drunk on her reaction to me. “A story I’d love to hear sometime.”