Page 30 of David

“It looks good. You look good,” I murmur, unable to take my eyes away from her.

“Okay…” my mother says. “I’ll let you two catch up. Do you need anything, Thea? Something to drink? A snack?”

“No, thank you. I won’t be long. Ed and I go out tonight, so I need to go home.”

“Okay. It was nice seeing you,” my mother says before walking away.

The door is closed when Thea peeks at me.

“You look so damn good,” I say in a different voice, grinning. “What is going on?”

I show her to my bed, yet she chooses to sit in the only chair in the room.

“Nothing.” She laughs. “Well… Everything.”

“He’s treating you right.”

“I can’t complain.”

“And the twins?”

“They’re great. He’s with them.”

I lean back against a stack of pillows.

“He likes being a dad.”

“More than you can imagine. They’re good kids too.”

“James and Leia.”

“Yup. James and Leia,” she says, reaching inside her pocket and pulling out her phone.

She taps the screen, scrolls down, and shows me their most recent photos.

“Who would’ve thought?” I murmur, studying the pictures of the twins with their mother and father in the background.

I don’t know who took their pictures, but they did a great job at snapping those candid moments.

“You both look great,” I say quietly, studying them.

Thea has always looked uncomfortable with her first husband. You could tell something was wrong even when he hugged her and tried to make it look like he cared about her.

Nolan, the professor who cheated on her, may have been many things, but he had never been a good actor.

There is no acting in Ed Preston’s touch.

His muscular arm is draped around Thea, who’s peering down, a secret smile on her face.

Despite her fears of the unknown when she met him and the sinking feeling in her chest she’s talked about so many times, she’s made it.

“You make him happy,” I say, returning her phone as my mind goes to the man I met today at the coffeehouse.

Why would a man like David Moore be so reluctant to have what Thea and Ed have?

My curiosity remains unsatisfied as I shift my eyes to the garment bag.

“Oh. About that…” she says, noticing the direction of my gaze and pushing out from her seat. She lifts it from the bed. “And the reason why I’m here,” she murmurs. “Terry told me you weren’t sure about coming to my wedding.”

---