Page 173 of His Surrender

The hallway feels colder than it did before.

I check on Liana, then continue to my bedroom and close the door behind me.

The garment bag from the gala still hangs in my closet. A photograph of Dean and me sits on the dresser, taken only a few weeks ago. We are both smiling. His hand rests possessively around my waist, and I am looking up at him like he is every wish I ever made.

I turn the frame face down. I can’t bear to look at it.

I crawl beneath the covers without changing my clothes.

The tears come the moment my head touches the pillow.

I press my face into it to muffle the sound, even though Dean is asleep down the hall and the walls are too thick for him to hear me.

He loves me.

I repeat it silently, trying to make the words feel like enough.

He loves me.

But love is the thing frightening him away.

I spent years imagining what it would feel like to hear Dean Ledger say those words. In every version, they were the beginning of everything.

Tonight, they feel terrifyingly close to goodbye.

I wrap both arms around myself and cry until exhaustion finally pulls me under, mourning a future I have not lost yet and already fearing that this may not be my happily ever after.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

DEAN

Imake it through half of Monday morning before admitting I am not going to get any work done.

My office is quiet, except for the muted hum of traffic thirty floors below and the occasional sound of voices passing in the hallway outside.

Every few minutes, my gaze shifts toward my phone. I don’t know if I’m more afraid that Aubrey will call or that she won’t.

She was already awake when I left the apartment this morning, though she pretended not to be. I saw the slight tension in her face when I stood in the doorway of her room. The faint swelling beneath her eyes. The way she kept them closed too deliberately, her breathing too measured to be sleep.

I almost sat beside her and apologized for everything I’d said. Instead, I stood there like a coward, and then I went to work.

I stare at my phone again. My father’s name sits near the top of my Recent Calls.

I pick up the phone before I can talk myself out of it.

Dad answers on the third ring. “Hey.”

The sound of his voice nearly causes me to hang up.

He sounds normal. Unaware that his son has spent the last two days dismantling the happiest thing that has happened to him in years.

“Are you busy?” I ask.

There is a brief pause.

“Not particularly,” he replies.

I’m sure he is lying. My father is always doing something, even if it is only reorganizing a cabinet that does not need reorganized. But he hears something in my voice.