I try to smile, but this morning’s news weighs heavily on me and I can’t quite make my lips obey. This is all a preview of what could have been, and I’m being sliced apart from the inside.

“Hey.” He cups my jaw. “Did I hurt you? Are you okay?”

“You didn’t hurt me.” But I’m not okay. “Come on.” I don’t want to share my news while we’re standing naked by the front door. “I’m going to go upstairs and clean up. I’ll meet you in bed.”

His eyes flare hungrily again and his gaze dips down and back up, but I turn away before he can meet my gaze. This feeling in my chest when he looks at me like that and I know what I have to tell him? It’s a little bit like heartbreak.

Easton

Something is wrong with Shay, and I think I know what it is.

I open the curtains in my bedroom to expose the picture windows and the floor-to-ceiling view of Lake Michigan. I wasn’t kidding when I said I wanted to spend the afternoon in bed with her. While she cleans up in the bathroom, I run downstairs to grab a plate of fruit—grapes, fresh strawberries, a few mandarin oranges—and a pot of coffee in case she changes her mind about it.

When I return to the bedroom, Shay’s in my bed. She curled on her side with her head on my pillow as she reads the back cover of the military suspense novel from my nightstand.

“I liked this one,” she says.

I smile. I’m going to love trying to keep up with her. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have time for pleasure reading while you were working on your dissertation.”

She huffs out a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Maybe if I hadn’t made time for pleasure reading, I would’ve finished a couple of years ago.”

I set the plate of fruit and carafe of coffee on the dresser before climbing into bed with her. “You’re really here.” I pull her back to my front and press my hand flat against her breastbone.

“I am,” she says. “It’s unreal. I didn’t think we’d ever . . .”

I press a kiss to her bare shoulder. She didn’t believe we’d make it work. One night in Paris then a night in my hotel room in Chicago before her dad died. I want us to have a chance, and it’s always been yanked away from us before we could settle in.