Page 73 of Just Say When

He paused. “This isn’t really about the slippers, is it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not.”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his eyes, wiping away the last vestiges of sleep. Silently, I handed him the mug. He took a sip, then handed it back to me.

“Come on, Essie. What would you have done back then if I had told you I was in love with you? We were seventeen. We were way too young to handle how we felt about each other. Your mom was right about that. That kind of love, at that age? It takes over your brain. Overrides all common sense.”

I squinted at him in the shadows. My mom made no secret of the fact that her greatest fear was that I’d end up a teen mom like her. “Is that what this is about? My mom? Because I did, in fact, lose my virginity my senior year of high school. Andyoulost yours the year before.”

To Valerie Kensey, a girl Brax had dated for six months. Damn, I had hated her. Now she taught fifth grade at the local elementary school and had a husband and two sweet little girls. She was actually pretty nice. But back then, she had something I couldn’t admit I wanted, and I hated her for it.

“Fucking Connor McRae,” Brax muttered, and it occurred to me that he had similar thoughts of the boys I had dated.

“He’s nice,” I said sweetly, enjoying my husband’s caveman side. “I saw him at the grocery store the other day. He’s the manager now, you know.”

Brax glared at me.

I gave him another sip of coffee. “My point is that there weren’t any unwanted pregnancies for either of us, as far as I know.” I gave him a questioning look, and he nodded. “So if you’re going to sit here and tell me youmade that promise to my brother because you were worried you’d knock me up, I’m going to remind you that condoms are a thing, something you were aware of even back then.”

“It wasn’t about sex. Not entirely, anyway. It wasyou.” His hands squeezed my thighs under the blanket. “Think about it. If we had gotten together that summer, would you still have travelled all over the country for barrel racing competitions? Or would you have been more selective, choosing smaller, local rodeos so you could stay close to me?”

I frowned. The pull to be near him had been so strong back then. If we had beentogether? With kissing and promises and touching each other naked? “I…I don’t know.”

“And then we would have kept dating through our senior year,” he continued. “Because what we had wasn’t a short-term thing, and I knew it even then. What then? Would you have put your dreams on hold a little longer? Compete part-time so you could follow me to college?”

“I don’t know,” I said again.

He was relentless. “By the time I graduated college, we would have been together for five years. What would we have done then? Marriage? Babies? That’s what people do after five years together. What would have happened to your dreams?”

“I don’t know.” I blew out a frustrated sigh. “That’s a whole lot of questions I don’t have answers for becauseI’m not omnipotent. The thing is, neither are you. But you still tried to answer those questions for the both of us. That’s not fair. We should have worked through those issues together.”

“I didn’t want to be the thing that held you back,” he said quietly. “The way you pulled me from the cliff? I wanted to do that for you. I couldn’t stand the thought of you giving upanythingto be with me, much less everything.”

“Brax, I—” I leaned over and carefully set my mug on the porch railing, then shifted so I was fully straddling his lap. With my hands on either side of his face, I held his gaze. “That’s something we need to decidetogether. This marriage won’t work otherwise. If we’re in it, we have to be in ittogether. There’s no other way.”

He blinked slowly. “What—what did you say?”

“I said we need to decide together,” I repeated.

“No, the other part.”

I wrinkled my nose. “This relationship won’t work otherwise?”

“You said marriage.” His throat worked as he stared at me. “Does that mean this is real?”

“Of course it’s real,” I said tartly, like my insides weren’t turning to mush from the heartbreaking vulnerability in his eyes. I took my hands from his face and folded them behind his neck. “A marriage is a legally binding contract, remember?”

“Essie.” He touched his forehead to mine. “I don’tmean on paper. I mean in your heart. Is it a real marriage in your heart?”

I closed my eyes. “Maybe it always was.”

Abruptly, Brax pushed to his feet, with me clinging to him like a monkey.

“Brax!” I laughed. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you inside. I want to make love to my wife.”

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