Page 115 of Deal Breaker
I don’t say anything else. I don’t need to. She’s one of the few people who knows what our life was like back then. She understands where I came from.
Her fingers twitch against the table like she wants to reach for me but isn’t sure she’s allowed to. There’s a flicker of something in her expression, concern that runs so deep it casts shadows.
And fuck, I feel it. Everywhere.
“Ford, do you think you can ever forgive me?”
Her eyes are wide, vulnerable in a way that guts me. Like she’s bracing herself for the answer she knows is coming but asked anyway because she has to. Because we can’t move forward without it.
We’ve tiptoed around this question for a long time now. I should’ve seen it coming, but it still knocks the air out of me when she says it out loud. She’s not asking to be let off the hook. She wants to know if there is still space in me that belongs to her, or if that door has been closed forever.
It’s not like I haven’t thought about it—sometimes it’s felt like it’s all I can think about. I’ve just never been able tosettle on an answer. I know what she thinks I’ll say—that what she did is too big to forgive, that I can’t even if I wanted to. But looking at her now, that doesn’t feel like the truth.
I take a deep inhale, let it burn all the way down. “I think…” I start, voice rough, “I already am.”
Her breath catches. I lean in, resting my arms on the table, like maybe that’ll help to keep me steady, help me hold this line I’ve been walking between everything I lost and everything I still want. “I’ve been mad, Lan. Hurt. All of it. I still am, sometimes,” I admit. “But every time I look at you, at Poppy…that part gets quieter. And I know I don’t want to live in that pain anymore.”
She looks at me, unblinking, and I can see the tears pooling.
“I don’t want to carry it if it means I miss what’s in front of me now.” I pause, let the words settle in the space between us. “I’m trying,” I tell her. “I think that’s what forgiveness starts with.”
She doesn’t speak right away, she just stares at me like maybe she doesn’t trust the softness in my voice, or maybe she doesn’t trust that she’s allowed to hope. Then she says, so quietly I almost miss it, “I don’t deserve that.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” I say, and my voice is rougher than I mean it to be.
And then, just as the words settle between us, she looks at me—really looks—and asks, “What’s happening with us, Ford?”
She doesn’t ask it casually. She asks it like it matters. My heart kicks hard behind my ribs because I’ve been asking myself the same thing every night for the past few weeks.
“I don’t have it all figured out yet,” I tell her honestly. “But I know I don’t want this to be temporary. I want to work on this. On us. I want to try.” A breath escapes her like she’sbeen holding it in for a long time. “And I want to be her dad, Lan. Not just a few nights a week. I want to figure out what it looks like to be a family.” I pause, then add, “With both of you.”
Her bottom lip trembles, just barely, and she drops her gaze to the last bite of cake sitting on the table between us. “I want that too” she whispers, one hand stretched around her cup, her other resting in her lap, palm facing up and open.
I drop my hand under the table without even thinking. I find her knee first, warm under my palm. I let my fingers trail upward, slow and uncertain, until they find the curve of her thigh. My hand settles there, like I need to touch her to keep from unraveling.
I’ve been hard on her. I’ve kept her at arm’s length. I’ve let my silence speak louder than my words, let it build a wall between us instead of working to tear one down. But I’m done holding back. I don’t want to stay on opposite sides of this anymore. I don’t want her walking out of this café and wondering what I’m thinking. I don’t want to keep pretending like I’m okay with the distance I’ve put between us.
I want more. I want all of it. So, I let go.
And so does she. Her hand reaches for mine under the table, like she’s been waiting a long time for a signal to do it. At first, she brushes her pinkie finger against mine. The touch is so soft, that I wonder if I imagined it, but then she does it again. It sends a slow ripple up my arm, flooding my chest with heat. She traces circles over my knuckles and runs the tips of her fingers over my wrist until her fingers thread through mine. We stay like that, our hands tangled underneath the table, and everything after that softens. The air grows thicker. Sweeter. It feels like opening a windowafter a storm. Whatever dam I’ve been holding up inside me gives way and something beautiful rushes in to take its place.
She smiles. I smile back because I’m sitting in a crowded coffee shop with the girl who’s been in my head since the day she left seven years ago. I’m smiling because I can touch her again, and no one here knows what that means.
“Can we get out of here?” she says, echoing the words that are on the tip of my tongue.
Our eyes meet. No explanation needed.
We’re already gone.
FORTY-TWO
Ford
The anticipation is so intense it almost doesn’t feel real.
It’s electric, buzzing under my skin, in my chest, in every shallow breath I take. My grip on the steering wheel is too tight, knuckles white, but I don’t loosen it. I don’t want to. Everything around me feels sharper. Louder. The hum of tires on hot pavement, the distant wail of a siren, the late afternoon city clatter—all of it lands harder than it should, like my body can’t filter any of it out.
The air outside is warm, just shy of hot. It seeps through the cracked window and grazes the side of my neck like a ghost. My skin reacts instantly in goosebumps, a shiver that feels less like a response and more like a need, deep inside me, wound tight and ready to snap.
