One Reckless Decision

What then?

She was not a puppet, she thought, the words feeling almost nonsensical, impossible, in her own head even as they resounded like truth in her gut. But a partner. His partner.

The idea of it all but took her breath away.

“If you are leaving me,” he said, his voice low and rough, his gaze intent on hers as if he was inside of her already, as if he could read her as easily as he read her body, as if he knew what she was thinking, “then you must do it soon, Bethany. I am only a man, and not a particularly decent one, I do not think. I fear my good intentions are few and far between where you are concerned.”

She felt the tug in her heart, the silver string wrapping around her again and again, tying her securely to him as it always had. She understood, in a way she never had before, that she could choose.

Every moment of the day, every moment with this man, she could choose: hope or fear. One would help her fly and one would shut her down. She had spent three years in fear, all alone in that house in Toronto. She had spent all the scared and lonely nights she needed to spend. Did she really want to spend the rest of her life that way, loving this man and keeping herself apart from him because it scared her too much to be with him?

What kind of life was that?

She sat up straighter and could not look at him. She lifted up the hands that she’d kept clenched into fists while the sobs had wracked her body and she’d cried out all the years of sorrow.

“But what if I choose to stay?” she asked, her voice the barest whisper, though she saw each word hit him like an electrical bolt. His dark eyes blazed with a fierce hope she recognized. She felt it hitch in her own chest.

And then, slowly, she opened up her hands until he could see her palms and what lay in each of them—what she had scrabbled to find in the pocket of the purse where she’d secreted them. What she had held on to even as she fell to her knees.

In one palm lay a simple platinum band. In the other, an exquisite sapphire ring.

“I was given to understand you got rid of them,” Leo said with an echo of his usual arch amusement, but he picked up the rings, holding them in his much bigger hands as if he was seeing them for the first time. As if he had not selected them himself from the Cartier boutique in Waikiki. As if he had not slid them onto her trembling fingers while she’d cried tears of joy through a smile so wide it had made her jaw ache.

“I refused to wear them,” Bethany admitted, looking at him and pushing through the cloud of fear—because what was a little more vulnerability at this point? What was left to protect, if she lost him and herself? “But I could not be without them.”

It was one more truth she had ignored. One more clue. One more part of a deep, abiding and painful love she had given up on, called hopeless, but had never quite managed to let go.

His eyes met hers then and Bethany felt exactly the same way she’d felt when they’d married on that private beach in Hawaii years ago. Holy. Sacred.

Right—despite everything.

They had stripped everything away, and here they still were. She could choose to fear, or she could choose to hope. She could choose—and the truth was that her heart had chosen long ago.

It had never wavered, even when she had—especially then.

“Allow me,” Leo said.

Then, just as he had so long ago, he put the rings back where they belonged. One by one, he gently slid them onto Bethany’s left hand. When they were secured, he laced his fingers tight to hers and drew her hand to his mouth.

“Do we start again?” he asked, his brown eyes calm and clear but so alive. So filled with hope, with a love she thought she just might dare to believe. To return. Bethany felt his gaze move through her, down to her toes.

Such a simple question, for such a complicated endeavor. But what else could they do? They could not seem to live apart. They could not seem to leave. Perhaps it was time to see what they could build together.

“We cannot seem to end,” she said, but her heart felt full, and the threads that tied her to him felt intricately knotted, tangled and tight. At last, she admitted to herself that she wanted it that way. That on some level she always had.

“Then we might as well begin,” he said huskily. A new promise. “Again and again.”

“Until we get it right,” Bethany vowed, her voice soft and sure.

He leaned closer and pressed his mouth to hers, making it right. Lighting the great fire that had always burned within them.

Sealing the promises they’d made so long ago. Sealing their fate.

Setting them both free.