Page 59 of Inferno

“Me, too, because we’re supposed be working right now.”

He flashed back to high school when they should have been studying for algebra. Instead, they had spent half an hour making out, using up all their time before he had to go home. So many times, they’d been distracted by each other enough they never got any work done. He wondered why he’d tried to study with her around at all.

“Why are you smiling?” she said.

He felt his lips widen in an all-out grin. “Just remembering algebra.”

She rolled her eyes, a smile tugging at her lips. “This isn’t high school.”

“I’d say that’s a shame, but I’m not sure those were the best years of our lives.”

She laughed. “I’ve never agreed with that. I much prefer being responsible for my own life and not having to ask for money every time I need some.”

“Right.” He leaned back in his chair, turned slightly toward her. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”

She looked at him, a frown crinkling her brow. “What do you need to tell me?”

“Remember after…” He wasn’t sure he was going to say that out loud. “We knew what we did could result in you being pregnant.”

And it had.

He didn’t want her to get swallowed up in grief again, so he said, “Remember how I brought you the listing for that house? I had just been promoted to lieutenant, and the pay raise was enough to swing the mortgage.”

“We were both saving just in case. Figuring we would need a down payment for something at some point—together. And the money to pay for a wedding.”

He nodded, not quite sure how to explain it without just being straightforward. “You seemed like you loved that house so much.”

“Of course, I did. We did that tour, remember? It was gorgeous. Why are you talking about the house?”

“I bought it,” Julio said. “I was going to tell you, but the explosion happened. I’d put down the earnest money a couple of days before. Then you were in hospital, and we didn’t seem to be able to have a conversation without yelling at each other, so I just let it go.”

“You didn’t.” She shook her head. “I pushed you away. I told you never to come back.”

“Maybe I thought at some point you would. That we would be us again.”

“So you went through with it?”

Julio winced. “I kind of waited too long and then couldn’t back out of it. But I didn’t really want to, so it isn’t as if I actually tried. I wanted to give you what you wanted when you came back.” As crazy as it was, maybe he’d been waiting for her this whole time.

“You live there?”

“Two years now.” He nodded. “I’ve repainted every room, made some upgrades in my spare time. I put a deck on the back. Remember when we said that?”

It had taken some time to start fixing it up. All the grief over the baby and their breakup had soured him on the house at first. But after a while with nothing to do on his time off but sit around an empty house, he’d realized that he could channel his frustration and energy into making the house his. Even if it would never be…theirs.

“I can’t believe you live in that house.” Samantha blinked, an astonished look on her face.

“You should come and see it, maybe later. Or the first chance we get. I think you’ll like what I did with it.”

She sniffed back the tears rolling down her face.

Julio reached into the basket in the center of the table and snagged a napkin. “It’s okay to be sad. We lost a lot, but we also found something that’s worth holding onto.”

“Now that we have it back, I don’t want to lose it again.” She dabbed her eyes with the napkin he handed to her. “But it’s hard when I can’t help thinking that every time I have something good, I never get to keep it. What’s the point in enjoying it right now and trying to soak up the moments when I know there’s no hope that it will be forever?”

She really thought that?

Samantha cleared her throat. “Aside from my sister, I’ve never had anything good that lasted. And even that was soured by my parents forcing me to always be the one to take care of her while she did whatever she wanted.”

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