Page 64 of When We Had Forever
“But...land in Seattle is exorbitant. Could we really afford that?”
“I wasn’t thinking about Seattle, actually.” His cadence remains steady, but I have the distinct impression that he’s measuring each word in advance. “I was thinking about Seagrove.”
My breath deserts me.“Seagrove?”
At my tone, Michael hoists his palms out of the water. “I know, I know. But hear me out. Ben Gallagher’s leaving Forsythe & Winter, and he’s asked me to go with him. He wants to start his own firm. He thinks that, with the demographic in Seagrove, we could make a killing. And I think he’s right.”
Seagrove. It should surprise me, but Bennyhasalways said he’d move back. I just never thought he’d ask us to accompany him.
“It’d be good for us, Mina.” Michael searches my face.“It’d take our income to a whole new level. And wouldn’t you like being near Kate again? I mean, you cried when you saw her yesterday.”
It’s true. I did. It had been so long.
“You wouldn’t have to miss her anymore,” he continues. “You could just...hop in your car and go to her house for a visit.”
My heart manages a frail beat. I do miss my best friend, every minute of every day, but I’ve never envisioned myself back home. I left that place for a reason. Maybe I didn’t get quite as far as I intended, but I got out.
“Mina?” Michael prompts. “It’s the kind of opportunity that won’t come again.”
I swallow thickly. “But wouldn’t this just mean you working even longer hours than you already do?”
“At first, maybe. Yes.” A cool note slides into his voice. “But once Ben and I got the firm off the ground, I could back off. A few years from now, I could be working less, not more.”
That stops me short. Longing scorches up my throat. “You mean...we could take vacations together?”
He stills. “Thisis a vacation.”
“I know, but...real ones.”
He says nothing, and I grimace. I didn’t mean to insult his generosity.
“Sorry,” I say.
He nods. His expression remains smooth, but the air around him seems to thicken, as if he’s diverting everything inward with such force that it’s sucking the surrounding night along with it.
I bite my lip. Michael never gets angry. Never raises his voice. He just gets quiet, and normally, this marks the point at which I back off. I relent, because there’s a whole continent inside of him that I no longer have access to. I haven’t since That One Time, and I’ve learned to allow him the safety of that retreat.
But this is a big ask. Enough that I can’t just drop it.
Maybe Michael senses as much, because he sighs and drags a hand down his face, leaving droplets clinging to his cheeks. “Look...if I said yes to vacations in a few years, would you say yes to moving?”
I hesitate. A duet of cricket song and swaying branches fills the quiet. The melody finds its way into the innermost sanctum of my heart, where I harbor desires too fragile to survive the light of day.
I could have more time with him. More opportunity to work past these walls, to get back to the people we would have been if Grayson hadn’t driven a fist through everything we’d built.
Here in the dark, in the forest, with my husband at my side, I allow hope to flower. “You know what?” I say. “Yeah. I think I would.”
Michael exhales sharply. “Really?”
I smile. “Really.”
Michael grins, crushes me in a wet hug, and just like that, it’s decided. We’ll travel backward—in time, in geography, to where we first met. To the place where we first struck the spark that ultimately led us here.
And maybe, just maybe, history will repeat itself.
AFTER
With Grayson’s phone call still heavy in my mind, I want nothing more than to walk straight off the cabin’s porch and into the forest. But if Michael taught me one thing, back when we still spent time trekking up and down mountainsides, it’s to never venture into the wilderness without three things: clothing warm enough to survive the night, a way to make fire, and a way to make light.
