Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
And that’s why I love her. Right there. That’s the whole of it.
“Yeah,” I say. I make myself say it. “Okay. We sign off.”
Royce nods once. “Good.” She looks down the dock toward the Modesto and then back to me. “And of course, that wraps everything up rather neatly. Voronin convicted. Sokolov off the board. The case closed.” A small pause. “And everybody walks out of it and goes on with their lives.”
Yeah… that is the ultimate reward, isn’t it?
Royce holds my eyes for one more beat, and everything she knows and everything she’s choosing not to know passes between us in total silence.
I can read her mind. I see what you are. I’m not going to look any harder. Keep it clean from here, and we never have this conversation, and you get the life you want.
“That sounds like a good outcome for everyone,” I say carefully.
“It does, doesn’t it.” Royce almost smiles. “The US Attorney’s office will have the consent documents drawn up by end of week. Someone will reach out to schedule the signing.” She turns to walk away, but then hesitates, looking back over her shoulder. “For what it’s worth—and it’s worth more than you think, coming from me—I couldn’t have done this without the two of you.” A longer pause, a nod of her head. “Thank you.”
And then she’s gone between the parked cars, and Josie and I stand there.
“Did that just happen?” Josie murmurs.
“That just happened.” I chuckle.
She turns to me. The wind’s got her hair and the gray light’s doing nothing to dull the brightness of her eyes. “It’s over.”
“I keep waiting to believe it.”
“Give it time.”
I reach out and tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, the way I have dozens upon dozens of times just because I have the privilege of touching her. “We’ve got plenty of it now. That’s the part I can’t get used to. We’ve got time.”
She leans into me gently. “So, what do we do with it?”
“Well.” I keep my voice light, even though my heart’s pounding. “First order of business, I figure we find a house.”
Her eyebrows go up. “A house. We have a house. Granted… it’s missing a wall, but the plywood covering has a certain charm.”
“That’s a house something terrible happened in.” I shake my head. “I don’t want to raise anything in a house where you got hunted through the kitchen.”
“Well, my house is small, but we could make it work.”
I shake my head. “I want to start fresh. Somewhere with a big yard. Somewhere you can put a fence around if you want one. A yard for a dog that’s going to shed on everything. Room for a couple of kids to tear across on a Saturday while one of us complains about mowing.”
Her eyes have gone bright and wide. “Sounds like a fairy tale to me.” She smiles.
“Me too,” I reply, tipping my head down to brush my lips across hers. “But that’s not the first order of business. There’s something else we need to do before we go looking at lots with good fence lines.”
I reach into the inside pocket of my jacket, the one over my heart—the one that rides right up against the scar, so the reach pulls, and I don’t care. The pocket I’ve kept my hand near for three days waiting for the right minute and then deciding there’s no such thing as the right minute. There’s just the woman and the want and the rest of our lives.
I slowly lower myself down to one knee. It’s not graceful. The scar on my chest pulls hard enough that I have to plant a hand on the bumper of my SUV stop halfway and breathe through the middle of it. Josie makes a small broken sound and starts to reach for me, but I wave her off.
“Don’t you dare hurt yourself,” she says, and she’s crying already, and laughing, and her hands are over her mouth.
“I’m fine. Look at me a second.”
She looks at me, bright blue eyes swimming with tears.
“I’ve spent thirty-six years building a life out of being afraid I’d end up back in that stairwell with nothing.” My voice isn’t steady, but I own my vulnerability. “I made myself the best in the world at a thing I’m never going to do again, and I told myself the money was the point, the having was the point, the never being that hungry kid again was the point. And it was, for a long time. And then you came up out of the water, and nothing has been the point since except you.”
The tears are running down her face now and she’s not wiping them.
“I don’t want the boats or the money or the gallery or any of it, not really. Not the way I want this. I want the yard. I want the fence. I want the dog and the mowing and the kids running across the grass and I want to be an old man on a porch who got boring on purpose because the woman he loved was worth getting boring for.” I open the box and the ring sparkles despite the gray light. My hands are shaky, but I don’t care. “Marry me, Josie. Let me give you the ordinary life.”