CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Cole
The house is quiet when I walk in.
I think. It sounds like she has the white noise ocean waves coming from the TV.
I shut the front door behind me, tossing my keys in the bowl instinctually. I walk toward the family room and stop dead.
“What the hell . . .”
The family room looks like a very tacky tropical resort threw up in it.
There’s a mattress on the floor in front of the fireplace covered in blankets and pillows that definitely belong in other rooms. Every plant in the house has somehow been dragged into the space and arranged in clusters.
Candles flicker from every available surface and even the TV has a screensaver of a relaxing beach scene playing.
There’s even—I squint. “Is that a fucking paper umbrella taped to my lamp?”
“Tissue paper made into one. I had to improvise.”
I turn and forget how to breathe.
Dublin stands at the bottom of the stairs in a pale blue bikini and a flowing white sarong tied low on her hips. Her hair is damp and falling around her shoulders like she just walked off a beach somewhere.
I stare at her. Then at the room. Then back at her.
And start laughing.
“What in the world is happening?” I ask.
She lifts one shoulder. “Welcome to Bali.”
I laugh again because there’s a fake tropical drink on the coffee table with a slice of pineapple hanging off the rim.
Because one of my patio chairs is somehow in the living room now.
Because she’s standing there looking nervous despite this insanity.
And because somewhere between leaving the bar and walking through this door, she turned my house into . . .
“Bali?” I ask.
“If we can’t go there,” she says softly, “I figured I’d bring it to you.”
God.
I look around again, taking it in more carefully.
“You moved every plant in the house,” I say.
“I wanted ambiance.”
“You moved the patio furniture in.”
“It’s island-ish.”
“Is that sand in that vase?” I scrunch my eyes. “Where did you get sand?”
“I crushed up the graham crackers you had in the pantry,” she says. “Do you know how hard it is to fake tropical décor at midnight?”
This woman. This impossible, headstrong, beautiful woman. “You did all this?”
“Obviously,” she says.
The laughter fades, and it’s replaced by something warmer. Significant. Way more intense.
I take a step toward her. “What are you doing, Dublin?”
She exhales slowly, fingers twisting in the edge of her sarong before she holds them still and meets my eyes.
“I messed up. I did it wrong,” she says.
“I made tonight about me. About my fear. My panic. My inability to process things at a normal human speed. It should have been about you. About what you said. And what that took.”
“Dublin—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Let me finish before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
Her words punch the air out of my lungs.
“I think I’ve loved you longer than I even realized. I just . . .” She laughs shakily. “I don’t know how to trust my comprehension of good things when . . . well, when other parts of my life are shit.”
I move closer without thinking.
“You looked at me tonight like I’d rejected you.
I promise you, that wasn’t it, Cole. I was overwhelmed because someone like you looked at me in the middle of the worst period of my life and said you loved me anyway.
” Her smile is watery. “And I got scared. Because what if this ends? What if all of this goes away and we wake up one day and realize this only worked because chaos shoved us together?”
I shake my head immediately. “No.”
“But what if—”
“No,” I repeat, firmer this time as I close the distance between us completely. “You want to know what I think?”
“What?” It’s barely a whisper.
“I think if we can survive this version of us—the media and the investigations and your career hanging on by a thread and my life being dissected every day”—I brush my fingers lightly on her jawline—“then normal doesn’t stand a chance against us.”
Her shoulders hitch.
“This is us figuring out what we look like when things are hard,” I say. “And I want to see what they look like when they’re not.”
“I want to too,” she says, head nodding and happy tears welling.
“And I think,” I say, “if you’re willing to turn my living room into a discount tropical resort because you were worried my feelings were hurt . . . then I’d be an idiot to bet against us.”
Her eyes light up. “I love you,” she says again.
I cup the back of her neck. “You know what my favorite part of all this is? You thought I wanted Bali when all I wanted this whole time was you.” A tear slips down her cheek, and I brush it away with my thumb.
“I don’t care where we are. I don’t care if it’s this house or some beach halfway across the world.
If you’re there, Dublin. That’s the only place I want to be. ”
“Cole.” My name is a sigh. An oath. The best goddam sound coming from her lips. “I wasn’t scared of the word relationship. I was scared of how much I wanted it with you.”