Page 99 of 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover

“I’m so sorry I freaked out, but yes, yes, yes.”

Our lips collide again, our kisses more frantic this time.

Someone whistles and calls, “You two are gross. Get a room.” Definitely Maggie.

Without glancing at her, I give her the finger, but I notice something odd. Candy Cane is still sitting by the park bench. From what I can tell, she’s not tied to it with a leash. “Delilah, did you staple Candy Cane to the grass?”

Arms latched around my neck, she laughs. “I trained her to sit and wait patiently.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know, right?” Delilah beams with pride. “She’s a natural.”

“But she hasn’t seen me in two weeks. Then I ran and you ran.” Excited running is a blatant invitation for Candy Cane to go berserk. “Are you telling me you trained our dog, who gets deranged excited when she hasn’t seen a person in two minutes, to sit calmly and wait to greet me?”

Instead of confirming my claim, she says, “Our dog?”

I brush our noses together, my heart beating wildly, still playing catch-up to all that’s happened. “Our dog is brilliant. We should have her IQ tested. Get her enrolled in advanced linguistics.”

Now that I’m looking closely, there’s nothing calm about Candy. Her body is pitched forward, her eyes wide and searching, desperately waiting to be told she’s allowed to move. Unable to resist, I call her and she bolts, taking a running leap at me. Her exuberance knocks me down, but I don’t mind. Delilah hits the grass with me, both of us being smothered by dog licks and love.

“We could sleep out here tonight,” I say as I rub Candy’s ears and stare into Delilah’s Sonic eyes. “Wake up with a bunch of kids staring at our faces.”

“E,” she says, her expression sobering. “I promise to never push you away again like I did. But”—she swallows hard—“I’m still worried you haven’t thought this through.”

I trail my finger down her pinked cheek. “Which part?”

“The not-having-kids-of-your-own part. You might grow to resent me.” Her voice thins with worry. “As you get older, you might have regrets. So many times, when you talked about Candy, you mentioned being a dad.”

I sift through our conversations, the moments I noticed Delilah pulling away from me: in the shelter playroom after playing with the dogs and in the elevator at the Sheldrake Inn. Both times I made off-the-cuff comments about being a crap or overbearing dad, clueless to how those remarks affected Delilah. They were nothing but that for me—remarks. Jokes to keep things light. There’s only one truth for me, my holy grail at the end of this turbulent path.

I brush a wild curl behind Delilah’s ear. Her eyelids flutter. “When I saw you in the airport lounge,” I say, still awed by fate’s hand guiding us together that day, as though Life was on my side this whole time, doing all he could to right my father’s wrongs, “and thought you were married, something in me atrophied. I wasn’t thinking about the kids we wouldn’t have or the family picnics I wouldn’t experience. I was thinking about us, the woman I love more than anything, officially having slipped out of my grasp, and I was devastated.”

Her breath catches.

“Learning you can’t have kids also devastated me,” I go on. This is the part I planned to say to Delilah’s face before she stole my thunder with her reconnaissance work and attack hug. Words said with imploring eyes, a wildly beating heart, and open sincerity. “Not because we wouldn’t have children of our own. I was tortured because of the pain the accident and outcome caused you. I don’t care if we live a life with a brood of dogs or if we adopt kids who need homes, or if we’re just the cool aunt and uncle who buy our nieces and nephews alcohol when we shouldn’t and take them to get tattoos to piss off their parents.” Better ones than Desmond’s. “The details don’t matter to me. Because they’re just that—details. I won’t live another ten years without you by my side, let alone one day. Nothing’s more important to me than us being together.”

Her eyes glaze. “I love you so much, E.”

“Because of the abs?”

Her laugh is watery. “Because you’re you. I’m so lucky to have you.”

“We’re lucky to have each other. Also, there’s gonna be a lot of the Sex in our future, Mars.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Stop calling me Mars.”

Squinty eyes aside, I hear the smile in her voice. She still adores that nickname. “Sorry. There’s gonna be a lot of the Sex in our future, Uranus.”

“You’re impossible.”

Candy Cane lies at our feet while we talk about the Desmond situation and Delilah’s reconnection with my mother and how brilliant and cute our dog is. Townsfolk call out greetings as they pass our reclined bodies. We smile and wave back. We don’t talk more about her accident and its repercussions. We’ve done that plenty the past two weeks, and I have no doubt those tough topics will come up later. For now, we kiss periodically and touch chastely, the trauma of our history settling into a deeper understanding. This togetherness. Our bond, unbreakable no matter what drama is tossed our way.

When Candy gets up and pees on a kid’s toy fire engine, we decide it’s time to go.

Delilah clambers to her feet and brushes grass from her jeans. I jump up, which causes Candy Cane to prance around my legs and bark. I’m clearly not the alpha in our threesome. I’m the runt she bosses around and plays with.

Before I can grab Delilah’s hand and finally head home, she steps in front of me. “Since this reunion has gone as well as I hoped”—her shoulders hike up in an excited hitch—“we have plans tonight.”