Chapter 52
It’s Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend.
Eliot and Anna pull into the driveway, windows down and music blasting.
Phoebe bursts onto the porch with her overnight bag.
The three of them are headed to Chicago, to meet up with Sam and Lucy for a getaway planned around Phoebe: the Shedd Aquarium, the Lincoln Park Zoo, Navy Pier, and a river cruise.
I assumed Mick and I would be going too, but my friends insisted we take the weekend off from “parenting.”
What they don’t know is that Mick asked me to dinner tonight—just the two of us.
I’ve had butterflies all day.
As Phoebe climbs into the backseat of Eliot’s SUV, she leans out the open window and waves.
“Text me lots of pictures!” I say.
“We will!” she says.
I stand there after they pull away, feeling almost disoriented by my sudden freedom.
—
Mick takes me to a small lakeside restaurant with white tablecloths and string lights. We sit outside.
The chairs are close enough that our knees bump when we shift. The air is warm, the lake a dark sheet behind us, the murmur of other tables fading to a low hum as candles flicker between us. Mick orders trout. I order pasta. It feels alarmingly natural.
We stay in the shallow end of things—a bar opening in Merton; Arrowhead’s new football coach; Eliot’s new boyfriend.
For the first time all summer, it feels like we’ve stepped out of caretaker mode.
We’re just us again, talking about nothing that hurts.
Even under all that lightness, another conversation hums between us—unspoken, unmistakable.
Part of me wants to pull back and call tonight what it is—a date—but the rest of me just wants to stay in this golden bubble where his eyes find mine and linger a fraction too long.
After dessert, Mick pays the bill and we return to his truck. He comes around and opens my door, his fingers brushing my wrist. As I step up, a current shoots up my arm.
“I have one more stop in mind,” he says.
The cab is dim, the radio low, his profile lit in passing streetlights. I watch the easy way he drives, his wrist loose at twelve o’clock, and I’m pulled backward and forward at once.
When he turns into the orchard, his headlights sweep across branches bowed with fruit. The night opens around us, layered with apple and grass and cool summer air. Mick rolls down the window to a chorus of crickets. My spine tingles—anticipation or recognition—maybe both.
He slows the truck near the barn, then parks. He turns and studies my face—not the way he used to look at me in high school, but with a more grounded gaze.
“C’mon,” he says quietly, nodding toward the bed of the truck. “Let’s sit for a minute.”
My heart tilts. I slide out of my seat and follow him to the back of the truck, watching as he drops the tailgate.
He hops up first, then reaches his hand down to me. I take it. His palm is rough and warm. We sit side by side, legs hanging, the orchard stretching out in front of us.
I shiver, and Mick reaches back for a wool blanket, then drapes it over our legs.
Our shoulders brush, his thigh solid against mine.
Heat flares where we touch. The grown-up, sensible part of me whispers warnings about timing and caretaking.
The rest of me—the part that has been quietly, almost unconsciously, moving toward him all summer—just leans into the warmth.
The night presses close.
For a long time, neither of us speaks. Then Mick clears his throat and turns to me. “I need to tell you something,” he says.
There’s something raw in his expression, as if he’s taken off armor I didn’t even realize he was still wearing.
“I’m listening,” I whisper.
“I know life took us in different directions,” he says, his voice quiet. “I know I gave up on us. That I hurt you. That I lied to you.”
The words hit like a strange mix of impact and relief—like being slammed and somehow caught at the same time.
I nod, taking in every word.
“But loving you has been the one thing that’s never changed,” he says. “It’s the clearest truth of my entire life. I fell in love with you when we were just kids, and I never stopped. Not for a single day.”
My fingers curl around the edge of the tailgate. I think of all the nights I lay awake in New York, wondering if I’d imagined the scale of what we were. I can see now that I hadn’t.
“It was real,” I say, barely getting the words out. “All of it.”
“It still is, Billie. At least for me.”
I can only stare at him.
“You’re the one I want to build a life with, in whatever shape it takes. I want the mornings, the grocery lists, the spelling bees, the walks and talks, the good parts and the hard parts,” he says, a helpless smile tugging at his mouth.
“I want it all. With you and Phoebe and—who knows—maybe more children.” His voice catches and his eyes fill. “And if you give me another chance, I swear I’ll never let you go. I’ll follow you anywhere, through anything.”
The orchard goes impossibly quiet, and something in me lights up like a match struck in the dark—bright and terrifying at once.
“I’m yours, Billie,” he says, his breath on my face. “I’ve always been yours.”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out.
He leans in.
I meet him halfway.
His hands cradle my face, thumbs brushing my cheekbones, fingers sliding into my hair.
And then he’s kissing me—pulling me in, closer and closer. His lips move over mine with a familiarity that makes my whole body remember. Yet it also feels new, like we’re writing a completely different story over the old one.
I fist the fabric of his shirt at his chest, feeling the wild, insistent thud of his heart, anchoring myself as the world narrows to the heat of his mouth, the solid press of his body against mine.
When we finally break apart, it’s slow and reluctant, our foreheads still touching as we catch our breath.
Somewhere behind us, an apple drops from a branch and thuds softly on the ground—the sound small but certain, like a season turning.