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“I have. It never worked out well.” He reached under my back and pulled me upright, again. “I’m worried that I will love him a much as I love you. And I’m worried that if I don’t, this won’t work.”
“But I want you to love him as much as you love me,” I said, before I realized that I’d also implied the inverse. “I don’t think you’ll love him in exactly the same way you love me. But I want you to feel about him the way I feel about you.”
“And how is that?” Neil teased. I wasn’t the kind of person who kept my affection under wraps.
But if he was giving me an invitation to share my feelings, I wouldn’t let it pass me by. “Like you’re a part of my soul. That you make me something more than whole.”
He looked taken aback.
“Do you think you could ever feel that way about El-Mudad?” I asked, tilting my head to study Neil.
His stunned expression didn’t change. “I…think I could. Yes. The way I feel, right now… Do you remember when you first came with me to England? And we had Christmas at Langhurst Court?”
“I’ll never forget it.” For good memories and bad; Michael had proposed to Emma, but we’d also been celebrating what could have been Neil’s last Christmas.
“That’s how I feel, now. Minus the cancer, of course,” he corrected himself. “But that feeling of promise, that you and I had cemented our relationship, somehow…that it was safe to let myself love you entirely… That’s what I feel, right now.”
“That sounds like a great feeling.” It had been so easy to have El-Mudad here with us, and so natural. “I’m a bit more…comfortable? Settled? I really want this. But I don’t want it if you don’t.”
“No, I do. I very much do,” Neil insisted. “Perhaps we should stop trying to convince ourselves otherwise.”
“Then, it’s going to happen? We’re going to move in together?” My heart did giddy flips. We would have to get a bigger bed. Oh, and figure out a way to explain why he was always around.
And explain things to Olivia.
No sooner than reality had crashed into my head, Neil echoed my concerns aloud. “I’m not sure we could ever be open about that arrangement. Imagine trying to explain to your mother, or to Valerie, or Olivia—”
“In other words, we’d have to keep this a secret forever.” Everything in me deflated. The week had been a beautiful fairytale. But my mom couldn’t be in Vegas forever. Olivia lived with us. And Valerie already criticized our parenting enough.
“And there’s no guarantee he’ll want to live here,” Neil reminded me.
My conversation with Deja swam into my brain. “I’ve actually thought of that. It might not be safe here in the future.”
“It’s not entirely safe, now,” Neil said grimly, his jaw tightening.
I didn’t want to let go of the fantasy, though. Not when it was hard enough that he’d left. “Let’s not think about that, now.” The most brilliant idea struck my brain. “Oh, my gosh. You said you’re feeling like you felt at Langhurst Court?” When he nodded, I went on, “We should have Christmas there this year.”
“What about Christmas with Valerie and Laurence, for Olivia?” Neil disentangled my legs from his waist and swam to a shallower spot.
“Let’s bring them!” I suggested, getting more excited the more I thought of the possibilities. “Let’s invite everyone. Your siblings, my family. And El-Mudad.”
“Sophie…”
“No, hear me out. Let’s introduce him as our friend. And just see how everyone likes him. We don’t have to make any big announcements.”
“I don’t know,” Neil tried, but the idea was too good, damn it. He relented with a sigh. “All right. I’ll ring in the morning and have the house closed for the week after Christmas.”
“Closed? Don’t we need it—” Then, I remembered that he meant closed to paying visitors. “Jesus, our life is so weird.”
Neil grinned. “Darling, you were never going to be conventional.”
Chapter Twelve
“And this is the fountain on Thursday night…”
I nodded and tried to look genuinely interested in the photo on Mom’s phone, but she’d taken a picture of the fountain outside the Bellagio every night they’d been there.
“It sounds like you both had a wonderful time,” Neil observed from the stove. Though it had been a busy week for Mom and Tony, they insisted Sunday dinner go on as usual.
If Neil thought he would deter her from a chance to describe every one of her four hundred pictures in detail and tell us the same stories a hundred and twelve times, he would be sorely disappointed.
“It was fantastic,” Tony enthused. “Thanks, again, guys.”
“It was the least we could do,” I replied, mentally adding, to keep you out of our business for a week.
“Hey, so, what did you guys get up to while we were gone?” he asked. He’d perched his big frame atop one of the stools at the island and hunched over the countertop as though he were in a bar, even though the bottle in his hand was a sparkling water.
