Chapter 26
ADELINE
Something big had shifted today and it was hard to ignore that as I tucked the girls into bed. We’d spent the entire day in and around the pool, laughing and having fun with Zach. He had disappeared for about an hour this morning, but once he’d joined us outside, he had stayed.
The whole day.
“Are we going to live here forever?” Jennifer asked as I tucked the blankets tight around her. “I like it here. I like the pool, and having my own room, and playing with Zach.”
“I like having my own room too,” Lu shouted from the bedroom next door. “I don’t want to leave. Ever.”
A pang of guilt and uncertainty shot through me, but I shook my head and offered Jennifer a soft smile. “No, baby. It’s just a vacation.”
“I’m not leaving,” Lu insisted loudly from the other room. “I’m staying here forever and swimming all day.”
I sighed, a definite sense of dread suddenly creeping in. Today had been an absolute dream—for them, sure, but also for me. Yet, there was so much still up in the air right now that I had no idea how to respond to all of these questions.
“Will you tell me the story?” Jennifer asked around a yawn, her eyelids already heavy as she peered up at me in the dim light filtering in from the bathroom. “The one about the princess and the prince.”
My heart skipped a beat. She had no idea that for years, I’d been telling her the story of me and Zach.
The love story she adored more than any other was ours, starting with our friendship and ending with the day he’d told me he was in love with me, and the crush I’d thought was unrequited for a long time ended up being the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Other than my girls, of course, but that went without even having to think about.
“How about I tell it to you tomorrow night?” I asked quietly, surprised that Lu hadn’t interjected again yet. “You’re exhausted, baby. We’ll come to bed earlier tomorrow and I’ll tell you the whole thing from start to finish.”
Her lids were already fluttering. She managed a sleepy smile before giving up the fight and letting them drop. I swore she was asleep before I even stood up, and when I strode across the bathroom to check on Lu, she was fast asleep too.
I smiled. I forgot how much spending a day in the sun and water tires them out.
It had been a long, long time since we’d had that. I kissed both their foreheads and hovered for a beat, just making sure that they were both well and truly out before I left.
Already dressed in pajamas, I crept back downstairs for some water before I’d probably retire for the night myself. The girls had stayed up late, forcing Zach to watch an old-school Barbie movie, Swan Lake, from the early 2000s.
Strangely, it hadn’t taken much force, if I was being honest. Jennifer had asked if he’d seen it, Lu insisted that he had to, and less than a minute later, he’d bought it on a streaming service to watch in the theater room.
I padded down the stairs quietly, wondering why I was hoping that he was still downstairs, awake, and maybe even waiting for me. Oh, who I am I kidding? I know exactly why I want that to be true.
The fact was that I wanted some time alone with him.
Not because I wanted to dredge up the past or try to apologize again for the way I’d left him.
I just missed him. For a long time, I missed him so, so much, and now he’s here, and he’s doing everything I ever dreamed about, and I haven’t had enough of him.
While I would never, ever say any of those things out loud, they were all true. It was also true that I was wondering if today had been a one-time thing. Honestly, it had been a perfect day, a family kind of day the girls had never experienced with a father-like figure around.
As I walked to the kitchen past the back patio, I noticed a light was on and I slowed, suddenly realizing that he was out there. Sitting alone on the deck overlooking the pool, he had a glass of white wine in his hand and a bottle in an ice bucket on the table.
With another, still empty glass right next to it.
My heart thumped in my chest. That’s for me. He has a glass ready. For me.
I had no idea why that meant so much, but just the thought of unwinding with him after the day and that he clearly wanted me to made all the difference. For so long, I’d felt so unwanted, and despite everything I’d done to Zach, he’d never once made me feel that way.
When I walked out onto the patio, he looked up, his features relaxed and those green eyes still warm, even if he did seem kind of wary. “Do you happen to know where Bear is?”
“He’s sleeping on the rug in the bathroom between the girls’ rooms,” I said quietly, though I didn’t really know why I was keeping my voice down. It wasn’t like I could wake neighbors or even the girls in a house this size. “I think he likes keeping an eye on them.”
“He definitely does,” Zach agreed, absently reaching for the spare glass and filling it before handing it over.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
He’s been herding Theo around for the past year since I got him.
I guess even though he flunked out, some stuff they taught him still stuck. ”
“Flunked out of what?” I asked as I accepted the glass and sat down at the table with him.
“The Police Academy,” he explained, turning to face me with a wry smile on his lips. “They basically said he was too excitable and not focused enough. I adopted him on the spot.”
My heart melted into a puddle of animal-loving goo. “Why am I not surprised?”
He shrugged. I settled in, moving my gaze away from his when the eye contact became a bit too intense to handle without kissing him. I caught sight of the label on the wine bottle and my mouth formed a quiet, “Oh.”
I turned to look at him. “Did you remember my favorite wine or is it a coincidence that you bought that specific bottle from that specific vineyard?”
“Considering that said specific vineyard belongs to my cousin, it can’t be that much of a surprise.” He looked at the bottle for a moment. “I never stopped drinking it, actually.”
“That’s rich, coming from the guy who used to call white wine too girly for him,” I teased, the words popping out before I could stop myself from saying them.
Unfortunately, this particular wine also held a different kind of significance for us. Especially in the context of the first night he’d actually admitted to liking it, finally copping to the fact that maybe it wasn’t so girly after all.
We’d gotten horribly, horribly drunk after he’d been given a case of the stuff by Sterling, the cousin in question.
When we’d woken up the next morning, sprawled out next to each other on the floor of the apartment he’d lived in just after moving back to Chicago when we’d graduated from college, he’d made another admission.
He’d told me he was in love with me. That he couldn’t handle being just my friend anymore.
Tingles still shot through me at the memory of the anguish on his face when he’d told me that I could hate him if I wanted to, but that he hadn’t been able to keep it from me any longer.
He’d looked right into my eyes and claimed that it had been killing him.
Everything had changed that morning. We sat in silence for a moment now, both thinking about it, obviously taken back to that morning because of what I’d said.
Zach was staring at the wine bottle with an expression I couldn’t read on his face, like maybe he was either about to smile, cry, or maybe both.
Meanwhile, I stared at him, remembering so viscerally the joy that had erupted deep within when he’d said it. I’d launched myself at him, clumsy and probably still half-drunk when I’d clambered into his lap, caught his face between my hands, and kissed him.
“With this marriage,” he said finally, breaking the weighted silence between us. “I hope that I’ll be able to give you something you haven’t had for the past eight years.”
“What’s that?” I asked, desperately hoping, wishing, and praying that he was about to say love. I knew it was unfair. I knew that I had no right to hope that he still felt anything good toward me at all, but I couldn’t help it.
Zach looked straight into my eyes again and my breath caught, but then he spoke. “Security.”
I blinked rapidly, swallowing past the disappointment that surged up like a freight train from deep down inside. “Oh. Of course. What, uh, what exactly do you mean by that?”
At this point, I needed him to spell it out for me. Clearly, I was letting my hopes run away with me. Maybe it would be better if I just knew straight up what he expected rather than letting silly old fantasies resurface.
“Someone who’ll come home for dinner every night,” he said thoughtfully. “Obviously, I don’t know this for a fact, but it doesn’t sound like Louis did that.”
I shook my head. “No. Almost never.”
More especially not for the last five years after Lu had been born. Maybe it was closer to five and a half, actually. We’d found out early that she was another girl.
“Well, then that. Definitely,” he said. “I’ll be there every single night, Adeline.
I want to be the man who’s around for your daughters, a man they can depend on and who they know will never let them down.
I mean, I know I’ll probably embarrass them at some point, but I plan on doing my best never to disappoint them. ”
Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I tried blinking them back, but they welled anyway. “I didn’t expect you to say that.”
He shrugged just one of his shoulders this time, finally lifting his gaze back to mine. “Knowing what you went through with Louis has been hard for me. I just don’t really know what to do about it, but this feels like a start, at least.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why does it sound like you blame yourself for what I went through, Zach?”
He scoffed but didn’t say anything, just giving his head a slow shake. A sharp pain shot through me and I leaned forward, intently holding his gaze. “It wasn’t your fault. Nothing that happened was because of you.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
When I realized he seriously didn’t believe that, I sighed and raked my fingers through my loose hair. “I can’t change what you think, but you should know that the girls have never had a day like this. They’ve never had a dad grilling hot dogs and letting them drink as much soda as they want.”
One of his eyebrows started arching, but I kept going.
“Louis would never let us get a dog either. Even when he wasn’t home most nights and at the office all day, he still kept saying no, but now, they have Bear.
You gave them one of the best days of their lives today, Zach.
That’s on you. None of the other stuff.”
It seemed to ease his mind a little as he turned away from me to stare at the pool, the surface now calm and glittering under a bright, high moon. “Do they know yet?”
He didn’t have to explain what he meant. “No. I haven’t told them. I figured we have a little time before the show starts.”
The look in his eyes when I said it immediately told me otherwise and I cocked my head. “Zach?”
“When we go back to Chicago, it’s probably going to move faster than either of us would like,” he said, grinding his teeth before turning to look at me again. “I’ll do what I can to buy us a little more time, but I wouldn’t count on having too much of it once we get back to reality.”
A little more time. Right.
I drained what remained of my wine after and stood up. “I should go to bed.”
Zach nodded, but as I turned to leave, I stopped, leaning in to press a light kiss to his temple. The cardamon and slightly spicy scent of him was the same as it used to be, and it made me feel warm and wanting as I inhaled, pulling away before he could turn toward me.
“Thank you for today,” I said. “We needed it.”
With that, I finally turned away and went back inside, feeling him watch me as I walked away. We would be here for just shy of two more weeks and then, apparently shortly after, that man was going to become my husband.
Right this minute, I didn’t quite know what to make of that, but one thing I knew for an absolute fact was that I wasn’t as mad about it as I probably should’ve been.