Lost King by Piper Lennox (moboreader txt) 📗

guy who destroyed your life, but you fell for me anyway?”

He touches my face again.

“It does, Ruby.”

My crying has slowed to a gentle roll of tears down my cheeks, no sobs. I actually hate this more. At least sobs can only go on so long. Crying like this, it lingers like a slow leak. A crack at the bottom of a tank.

I close my hand over his. “You said you can’t trust me.”

“I can’t. But I want to learn.”

A jolt of hope shoots through me, but I rein it in. Fast. “And tomorrow? When all the panic of tonight wears off, and we’re back to how things were—”

“I’ll still mean every last word.”

“You can’t say that, Theo. You don’t know how you’ll feel in a few hours.”

“Maybe not. But I know how I felt a few hours ago.”

Sniffling, I roll my eyes. “Right, when you thought I was dead beside your pool? No offense, but you’re kind of proving my point. Tonight was a—an anomaly. It’s not real.”

“No. Before that. I sent a text asking you to come over so we could talk, literally a second before Callum showed up. Everything I’m telling you right now? I was going to say pretty much exactly the same thing when you came over.”

I draw away on instinct. My battered, sleep-deprived head barely makes sense of his words. “What text? I never....”

The blur of events plays out as I shut my eyes to think. I realize the last time I checked my phone was in Frankie’s kitchen.

“Too bad I can’t prove it. Our phones are either still at the bottom of my pool, or sitting in some rice in an evidence locker.”

I laugh. It hurts. Maybe I’ve got a bruised rib or two the doctor missed, or the bittersweetness of it all is just too much: as happy as I am to learn Theo sent that message, I’m unbelievably sad he didn’t send it sooner.

It might just be my heart, springing back to life inside my chest as he leans close.

“You don’t have to prove it,” I breathe, when our mouths almost brush. “I believe you.”

At first, all I can smell is sweat, chlorine, and dried blood, wiped away with antiseptic. Every ugly scent of this night I want to forget.

Then he kisses me. I close my eyes as the scents transform, and all I smell is him. Cologne. Soap. Lavender and leather and espresso, and the muted salt air of the bay in winter.

No...I don’t want to forget this night.

As his fingers wind into my hair and I melt against him, I don’t even wish it had happened some other way.

Maybe those little twists of fate, those seemingly random coin tosses that turn us without warning, are the only things that get us where we need to be.

Epilogue

Seven Years Later

“Okay. Start the timer.”

I hit the button on my phone and set it aside, pulling Ruby down with me onto the bed. “I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

“You said that last time.”

“Last time you weren’t throwing up every day at work, sleeping fourteen hours straight—”

“It’s just a flu.” She crosses her arms across her face as she lies back against my chest. “Seriously, don’t get your hopes up.”

For her sake, I consider telling her I haven’t. But I don’t want to lie.

Our house is way too quiet. Usually, she’s got music playing from the kitchen, I’m practicing, or there’s a small crowd of our family or friends out on the patio, laughter rolling through this place like fog.

Test days are a different story, though.

“My aunt keeps saying if we stop trying, it’ll happen.” Ruby throws her hands up towards the ceiling in exasperation, then lets them fall, almost clocking me. I deflect gently, capturing her hand in mine. “How do you just stop trying, though, when it’s all you can think about?”

“I don’t know.” I turn her engagement ring until it aligns with the wedding band, fitting them back together the way they belong. “Then again, I’m still not sure how we started trying in the first place.”

“That broken condom,” she reminds me, laughing softly as she frees her hand, turns in my arms, and pushes her face into my neck. “Remember? You were like, ‘Well. Guess we’ll see what happens.’”

“Right, but that was more like, ‘Hey, if it happens, we’re good.’ I meant the rest of it: charting temperatures, ovulations tests....”

Ruby props her chin on my sternum and brushes her knuckles against my jaw. She likes my beard. Says it’s fitting for a pianist. Something about how distinguished I look.

I rarely listen to it all. Having her touch me like that puts too many dirty thoughts in my head to hear anything else.

“That,” she says, “was from Van and Juni having the twins. You were holding Luna, and I had Forrest, and you said, ‘That’s it. We need one of these.’”

“Did I?” I know damn good and well I did, and that that’s exactly when “let it happen” turned into “make it happen.” We weren’t engaged when Wes and Clara had Hal, so babies weren’t yet on the radar; when they had Journey, Ruby and I were in the throes of wedding planning, only to ditch the whole idea and do a courthouse one anyway.

Even Van and Juni’s pregnancy announcement didn’t put the idea in our heads, because we were focused on house-hunting. Our choice of a small two-bed, one-bath rancher in Sparta, NJ, didn’t fit with Gilmour Durham’s current portfolio, but Kimberly—now his partner in both senses of the word—reminded him that Durham Real Estate was looking to move away from sprawling mega-mansions and slow down.

But truthfully, it wasn’t even