Page 416 of Safe With You

And underneath all three, the smallest member of this family making herself known.

I looked up at the wall again.

At everything Ellis had captured before any of us knew where it was leading.

All those ordinary moments. All those days I thought I was simply living my life.

I didn’t know I was building one.

Sometimes I thought about the woman I was seven years ago, sitting in her car while rain hit the windshield, wondering whether she should wait another five minutes.

I wished I could sit beside her.

Not to change what she did. She figured it out eventually.

I’d just tell her to go.

Start the car. Drive home. Cry if you need to. Be angry. Miss him. Almost call him, but don’t.

Wake up tomorrow and do it again.

One thing at a time.

Because there was so much waiting for her that she couldn’t see yet.

A little girl who was going to leave her jacket in her bookstore so many times she’d eventually stop pretending it wasn’t supposed to be there. A man with a camera who would stay after closing without being asked. A bookstore she hadn’t finished building.

A version of herself she hadn’t met yet.

And a love she wouldn’t have to bleed herself dry to keep.

Ellis’s fingers slipped through mine.

I looked down at our hands.

My ring caught the light.

“You okay?” he asked.

I smiled.

“Yeah.”

He studied me for another second.

Then his expression softened.

“Come here.”

I went without hesitation.

His arms closed around me, and I rested my cheek against his chest while the bookstore moved around us.

Mila laughed somewhere behind me while Naomi told somebody entirely too loudly that she was responsible for all of this. The espresso machine hissed from the café, and the bell above the front door rang again.

Life kept happening.

Beautifully.