“But did you get my—?”
“I got what I think you’ll need,” he asserts, giving me another push. “And what I missed, we can buy, but I doubt we’ll be wearing much in the way of clothing.”
“But—”
He silences me with a kiss.
A hard, brutal kiss followed by a low growl only I can hear. “Get your ass in the fucking car, Moira. The sooner we get there, the sooner I can fuck my wife, okay?”
A bolt of lust sizzles through me, and I stupidly nod at him. He pushes past me and heads toward the door. I start to follow him blindly… like the Pied Piper, but then I shake my head.
“Wait,” I yell at him. “I’ve got to hug the kids goodbye.”
Chapter 12
Zach
“Here’s the key to your room, Mr. Easton,” the hotel clerk says. “Fifteenth floor, #1588, ocean view, balcony. I’ll have the bellman bring your luggage up right away.”
I take the small envelope holding two plastic keycards and give a slight shake of my head. “Hold the luggage. I’ll call when we’re ready for it.”
“Yes, sir,” the clerk says with a small dip of his head and a knowing look in his eyes.
I want privacy with my wife, and I want it now.
I hitch my leather carry-on satchel over my shoulder, because it has my laptop in it and that is needed sooner rather than later, and take Moira by the elbow. She’s staring in disbelief at her surroundings, still not quite understanding that just six hours ago, we were sitting by the Christmas tree with our kids and now we’re in Nassau.
Honestly, I’d expected a flurry of questions from her, but all she said when we got in the car and headed toward the airport was, “How long have you had this planned?”
I was truthful with her. I’d like to have told her that I had it planned all year, but truth be told, I made these reservations just four days ago when I had sort of an epiphany come to me.
Since our fight on Thanksgiving, I had been nursing a slightly bruised ego. Moira’s failure to enlighten me as to her desire to return to work was a low blow to my confidence. I had thought my wife considered me her ultimate hero, the man who would always make things right for her. Instead, I found out she didn’t have confidence in me, and that, in turn, made me start questioning things. While we were able to slip back into a fairly normal routine, the gulf between us seemed too deep to navigate at times, and I began to question everything I thought was important in my life.
I began to doubt that what Moira and I had was as tangible as I had once believed.
I know Moira doubted it too, as I could see it in her eyes.
My epiphany came four days ago when I had to make a trek up into the attic to find our original loan closing documents for the house. We were thinking of refinancing, and I needed to look over the original purchase details. I tore the entire house apart trying to find them. Moira suggested they might be up in the attic, but hell… up until that point, I’m not even sure I knew we had an attic because I sure as hell had never been up there before.
Sure enough, I found the box simply labeled, “House Docs and Bank Reconciliations,” in Moira’s handwriting, so it was confirmed she stuck it up here, and I was on my way back to the ladder when something caught my eye.
A backpack.
Moira’s backpack to be specific.
The one she carried into the Amazon eight years ago when she first came to find me.
That wasn’t the epiphany though. As I crouched down beside the bag and toyed with the zipper, I knew she also took this same backpack with her just a few months later when she came looking for me again.
After I left her.
Cut ties.
Ran away.
She came after me because she knew in her heart that I was her soulmate. That I was the one she couldn’t be without. Now sure, I had figured that out too about Moira myself, and was in fact on my way back to the States to find her at the same exact time, making it a travesty of travel errors, but the point being… Moira had more to risk than I ever did.
She braved danger and the potential for heartbreak and rejection. Hell, at that point, she knew she might be traveling thousands of miles only to find my dead body.
Moira was guided by love, instinct, and a deep and unfathomable gut feeling that we were meant for each other.
And that right there was my epiphany.
Moira was my epiphany.
Her confidence in us resounded strong within me, and I realized that all this shit… these petty fights and focus on things that are unimportant and trivial are not who we really are. We got lost for a bit, but when it boiled right down to it… Moira and I were created and exist solely for the benefit of each other.
We are a team.
We are one.
We are love.
And it struck me then, sitting in that musty attic and looking at a beat-up old backpack, that there was nothing in my life more important than making sure my wife was happy.
Nothing.
Not a job.
Not kids.