Page 47 of Forgotten Romance

“What happened to doubts not being allowed and that everyone just needed to say yes because this was happening?”

I lower my voice. “We, uh, hooked up. The night we finished decorating.”

Orson’s understandably shocked. “I think my flowers are at a one hundred percent strike rate.”

“Don’t want to know what that means. But it happened, and I keep wanting it to happen again, even though I know how stupid it is. We haven’t fixed anything. We’re …”

“Digging your hole deeper?”

“Right.”

Orson crosses his arms. “But you still love him?”

“So much.”

“Obviously the travel thing got too much for you, but if that was me and Ford, there’s nothing that would get in the way of me being with him. I’d rather two weeks out of the month than no weeks out of the month. If you love someone, you make it work. You figure out what you can sacrifice and what you can’t, and then you go from there.”

I huff, frustrated. “That’s the exact opposite of the advice everyone else is giving me.”

“It’s pretty fucking clear. If you love him, and you hate that he’s away from you guys so much—go with him.”

“With … him?”

“Sure, why not?”

Why not? There are a million reasons why, and they’re all ones I’ve faced time and time again whenever I considered this question. “The kids have school.”

“Then homeschool them.”

“And my job?—”

“If they can’t be flexible, quit. You don’t need the money.”

“But … where would we live?”

“Wherever Davey does now. Next?”

I had plenty of reasons before we started this conversation that I’m scrambling to come up with now. “It’s not a stable life for the kids.”

“Kids are adaptable.”

I shoot him an unimpressed look. “Stop making this sound easy.”

“I’m not. Look, I get it’s a hard choice. I’m only pointing out that if being together is the most important thing to you, you can make it work.”

“And if not, I should walk away.”

Orson shrugs. “Well, I wasn’t going to say it.” He gestures toward the LEGO. “What’s the plan?”

“His gran used to host dinner on Christmas Eve and cooked the same meal with pudding every year. He used to love it, and we haven’t had it for a while, so I thought I could learn how to make it and then give him back what I broke. Like, it’s nothing special, but I thought the gesture?—”

“It’s perfect.”

I perk up. “It is?”

Orson’s expression sobers. “Thinking about people and making them feel special is the most important thing you can do. And I don’t want to get all heavy on you, but speaking from experience … I know what it’s like to lose the person I love. I’m incredibly lucky to have a second chance at this, and because of my perspective, there isn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do to make us work. It’s easy to let our issues get to the point we can’t see anything else, but … in the end, none of that matters.”

Orson has a perspective no one else I know does. Losing his wife drove home how short life is, and the thought of losing Davey that way has me so fucking panicky I can barely breathe. On this side of it, with our marriage a distant memory, it’s easy enough to think I could handle his traveling, but then I think of how it felt last time he left—when we weren’t even together—and that confidence shrivels.

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