“A crush, I’m telling you.” Justin smiled, then took another huge swallow, finishing his drink. “If only we could get Thomas Price’s crush on you to somehow turn into the university president’s crush on me.”
“Thanks for the note, by the way,” I said, laying my face in the warm crook of his neck. “It really— I needed it.”
“I never should have stopped giving them to you.” His voice was serious. “Never.”
“Yeah, well, I think we both have plenty of things we wish we’d done differently.”
Justin set the empty glass on the counter, then put his hands on my face, running a thumb over my cheekbone. “I’m so glad you’re back, Molly Sanderson,” he said, smiling at me in that way of his that always made me feel like some miraculous, unearthed treasure. “Promise me I’ll never lose you again. No matter what.”
“I promise,” I said, staring straight back at him.
He was still worried about my ability to handle the story. But he was wrong. It would be good for me, even if I wasn’t sure how.
Justin leaned forward, sliding his fingers to the back of my neck and pulling me to him. He kissed me hard, the way he had before he was afraid I might shatter. And I let myself get lost in it, in a way I hadn’t for a long time. Suddenly, I needed us to disappear into each other. I needed everything else to fall away—the past, the future. All my mistakes and shortcomings. All the ways I had failed Justin and Ella and myself. The ways I had failed her, my baby who never was. I needed to know that we had done better than survive. I needed to believe that we were reborn.
Justin kicked the kitchen door closed as he peeled off my shirt and I tugged at his jacket. A second later, my pants were off and I was naked up against the kitchen counter, unbuttoning Justin’s pants as he slipped his fingers under the edge of my bra. I pressed my open mouth against his neck to keep my sounds from waking Ella. As Justin pushed inside of me, I watched us move together in the reflection of the kitchen window.
We lay on the floor afterward, Justin’s crumpled suit between us and the cold tile floor, giggling and panting, our bodies threaded together like our much younger selves. My head was resting on Justin’s damp, naked chest.
“Do you remember the first time you spent the night?” Justin asked, his voice vibrating against my ear.
“How could I forget?” I adjusted my cheek until I found a softer nook under his collarbone. “It’s not every day you get the pleasure of sleeping with your head jammed up against a refrigerator.”
“It was a small apartment, wasn’t it? I remember waking up in the middle of the night, and there you were, pulling on your clothes.”
“It was six a.m., not the middle of the night, and I wanted to slip out before you fed me any lines,” I said. “I liked you. I wanted to keep it that way.”
“But my irresistible charm convinced you to stay.”
“Pancakes early on Saturdays, that was supposedly your thing. Except you had no idea what was open at that hour.”
“Yes, and you pointed out that I’d been lying, while eating the delicious pancakes I did eventually find for us.”
“Did I?” I laughed. “I was a hard-ass. Leslie was right. I’m surprised you wanted to see me again.”
“Come on, Molly, you know I’ve always loved that you’re straight-shooting.”
“Lucky for you I’ve mellowed with age.”
“You’re going to make an amazing reporter, too, I have no doubt.” Justin took a deep breath, which rocked my head up and down. “Just not on this story, okay? I want you to ask Erik to reassign it, Molly. Do it for me.”
I lifted my head to look at him, but he was staring at the ceiling. It was such a bomb, I was assuming I must have misheard him. “What did you say?”
“I’m too worried about what this will—how much this is going to dredge up for you,” he said, meeting my eyes. “Things have been so good lately, Molly. I don’t want to lose what we have back.”
This was my fault. I never should have gotten so emotional at the Black Cat. I’d probably seemed like I was about to go right off a cliff again. I felt so much steadier now. The story was just that: a story. One that meant something to me, yes. But it wasn’t about me.
“I was caught off guard at first that it was a baby. It’s true,” I said. “But I’m okay now. The story actually feels like it will bring—”
“Closure,” he said, finishing my sentence. “Yeah, I know. That’s what you said before. And that’s exactly what’s worrying me.”
“That’s not what I said before.” I hadn’t, had I?
“No, you’re right,” he said, his eyes sad as he stared at me. “You said it was ‘connected’ to what happened to us.”
He was right, that I had said. All I could do was stare at him. I didn’t have any defense.
“We’ve gone over this all before, Molly—there’s never going to be closure. Not for what we lost. And you’re just going to have to learn to live with that. We both will. Give the story back to Richard, Molly. He’s the news reporter, not you.”
“I’m not giving the story to anyone, Justin,” I said, feeling an unexpected flash of anger. I didn’t care if Justin was well intentioned. What he was doing and the way he was doing it were wrong. He was my husband. I needed him to support me. “I have to do this. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but if I can find out what happened to this baby, maybe I can make sense of . . .”
How had I started down that path again? I did sound delusional. Every road kept leading back to me and my baby. Justin let my unfinished sentence hang there, proof of his point.
“I understand you want to do this story, and I even understand why,” he said finally. “But what if you’re wrong about being okay? What if you’re not the best judge of how you’re feeling?”