Three to Get Ready, page 14
The ring arrives at the Hughes estate. It’s exactly what I chose for her.
It’s not enough.
Eva would say that wasn’t true, but I know better. She wants to be together. She wants to be loved. I can give that to her. I’m going to give that to her.
I text her from the Hughes Industries headquarters as soon as I’ve sent my secretary home for the day.
Finn: Do you have plans for the evening?
Eva: Why? Did you have something in mind?
Finn: If you’re free to meet with me, I do.
Eva: I could be free.
I pull up in front of her apartment building a short while later.
Finn: I’m here.
No reply. Then she steps into view on the sidewalk. It doesn’t look like she came from inside.
I climb out and offer her my hand. “I hope you didn’t rush home for me.”
Eva tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Leo swore they’d be okay.”
She’s been at her brother’s house, helping to take care of the new baby and her parents. It kept Eva busy. It gave me time to come to my goddamn senses about how much I want her in my life.
About how much I want her, period.
“So.” She’s so beautiful like this. Always. I barely have any sense of her dress because her face is so striking. “What did you have in mind?”
I stick my hand in my pocket and take out the quarter. It’s a perfect flip. The coin turns over in the air on its way to Eva’s palms.
“How about a bet?”
Her smile lights up her face. The sun’s already setting, and its embers reflect in her dark eyes. “What do I get if I win? Foam on my Starbucks order?”
“Come with me and find out.”
She sits in the passenger seat and talks to me on the way out of the city. I’m about to leap out of my skin from nerves and anticipation, but her voice soothes me. You wouldn’t believe how good a newborn baby smells, Finn. She’s just this little squishy bundle. Yesterday, she tried to lift up her head. I was so proud. It was incredible.
Eva gets quieter at the city limits of Bishop’s Landing. She’s silent when I pull the car into a spot near the docks.
I can’t read her expression. She looks out at the bluewater sailing yacht. If she’s anything like me, a montage of that first night is playing in her head. I feel just like I do now. Desperately glad to be near her. Overwhelmed with hope.
I go around to her door and offer her my hand.
Eva takes it.
She sticks close as we approach the yacht and lets me steady her during the transition from dock to boat.
Then we’re standing on the deck, right where we started.
I had a proposal for her then, too. A fake relationship. I offered her a fling. A distraction. And she became the only reality I want.
We’ve already made a new future together. I want to be part of it. I want her to be everything.
The first stars of the evening are appearing over the last of the sunset. I breathe in the moment. I want to remember this for as long as I can. The fading summer air. Eva’s hand in mine. The stars, coming back again, just like they promised.
The two of us, together, facing the future.
Then I turn her to face me. Drink her in with as much attention as I gave the sunset. I want to remember this, too. The flush in her cheeks. Her black hair stirring in the breeze. The soft set of her lips. I run my thumb over the corner of her mouth.
“Since the moment I saw you in your parents’ house, I’ve been trying to convince myself not to love you.” Eva’s lips part as if to interrupt. “No, this is important. I really tried. I fed myself every justification for why I couldn’t be with you. I explained it to myself a hundred different ways. At least ten times a day, I convinced myself that you’d be better off taking your chances with anybody else.”
Memorize her. Don’t forget.
“But in the end, none of those reasons changed the fact that I love you. That I’m in love with you. I can’t stop loving you. It’s hopeless. For a long time, everything seemed that way. I told myself there was no point in getting attached. I told myself that it was wrong, in fact, to let anyone get close to me. I wouldn’t be able to give them the time they needed.”
Eva leans her cheek into my palm.
“But then I saw you standing there with your mother, and I couldn’t leave you. I should have taken it as a sign that I’d never be able to walk away. How could I? You’re beautiful and strong and you had something I desperately needed.”
“What was it?”
“Hope.”
“God, Finn. You break my heart, you know that?”
“And you break mine. You didn’t want to accept my fatalistic bullshit. I told you I had seven years, and what did you say? You said—give me seven years. Give me seven months.”
“I would have taken anything you’d give me.”
Past tense. She’s speaking in the past tense. “You were telling me that I was enough, even if I didn’t have a decade to spend with you. I was a fool. I couldn’t hear it then. I couldn’t accept your love then.”
Her dark eyes shimmer with tears. “What about now?”
My chest feels overfull. What happens next matters too much, but I won’t look away from it. I won’t avoid it. The fall is coming either way, but I’m going to soar on the way down.
“There’s nothing I want more in the world. I don’t want to spend my life counting the days. I want to spend every day looking at you. Loving you. Letting you love me back, for exactly as long as we have.”
I get down on one knee, and a tear falls down Eva’s cheek.
Her hand is in mine, warm and soft. It’s home.
Remember. Remember. Remember. I want to remember this even when I have early-onset dementia, even when I’m babbling and out of my mind. It feels impossible that I could forget.
“I should have done this the first time I brought you here. I wanted to. I knew it then, how dangerous you were to me. I shouldn’t have wasted a second trying to convince myself otherwise.” I pull the box from my pocket and press it into her palm. “I love you, Eva Honorata Morelli. I want to give the rest of my life to you. Will you be my wife?”
She swallows hard, more tears shining in her eyes. “That’s what you want?”
“If all you were willing to offer me was scraps, then I’d happily take those. And that’s all I deserve. I know that, too. But I desperately want to marry you.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes. I will. I’ll marry you.”
I’m quick to take her into my arms and kiss her, but she’s already crying. Happy tears. Eva wipes them away while I open the ring box. She gasps at the sight and starts to cry again.
Her hand trembles when she holds it out to me.
“This is one of the greatest honors of my life,” I tell her. Remember. And then I slip the ring onto her finger. It’s an antique in the Hughes family. Priceless, but it means nothing without the warmth of her body. Remember, goddamn it. Don’t forget.
There’s a moment of stillness. We both look at the ring. A tangible sign of a real relationship. Nothing fake about it. Nothing pretend. Nothing transient. This ring means forever.
Then her arms go around my neck and her mouth is on mine and she said yes, she said yes, she loves me.
I need her so much. Her need matches mine. I take her down to thick blankets stretched across the deck and prop myself over her and let myself look.
Remember.
I wanted this that first night, too.
“I remember you like this,” Eva breathes. “You were over me. You were surrounded by stars, but I couldn’t see them. I could only see your eyes. Nothing but you.”
“I’m never going to forget you like this, Eva. I swear to God.”
She’s beautiful in the warmth of the sunset. My ring on her finger. Our baby in her belly. She’s going to be my wife. There’s nothing that could be better than this.
“You look so happy,” she murmurs, tracing a finger over my cheekbone. “Not the way you were before, though. Not laughing or teasing or charming the panties off women everywhere. That seemed happy, but underneath it felt like something else. Something manic.”
“That wasn’t real. This is. This is true happiness, darling.”
My wife.
Then I can’t stand to be separated from her. Not for another moment. I pull her out of her clothes. Eva does the same to me. She pulls me down over her.
I’m free to feel her skin against mine. Free to press kisses to her collarbone, and lower. This is what I wanted to do that first night. I wanted to worship her, and I didn’t. I held back. I told myself it could wait.
I’m never going to do that again.
I kiss her everywhere I can reach while she arches underneath me. No project is more important than memorizing all her soft places. All her curves. Eva shivers under my touch, begging, and when I push myself inside her, she cries out.
I don’t care. Let everyone hear how much she loves this. How much she loves me.
For the first time, there’s no fear between us. I feel like a different person and the one I was always meant to be. I’ve spent years searching for a sense of peace, and I’ve found it.
Eva holds me close and lets me watch her take her pleasure in my body. It’s a gorgeous sight. She shakes out her heat over me.
“Let me see you,” she demands, her voice sweet. Her hands on my face keep me in view. “God, Finn. You’re everything I need. It was so hard to pretend I didn’t want you.”
“Don’t pretend, Eva. Tell me every day. I’m going to insist on it.”
I don’t have to hold myself back. I let my pleasure have its way until I’m pulsing inside her. Eva’s body moves with mine like she’s meant for me.
She is.
She rolls us over before I’ve finished and the sway of her hips keeps me hard. So hard that I have no choice but to come for her again. Eva balances herself on my chest, holding on with her nails, and takes every last bit of pleasure she can find.
When it releases us, she leans down to kiss the fingernail marks she left.
“Don’t kiss them too much.”
“Why?”
“Because I want them to stay forever.”
“Oh, I doubt they will. But I can always make new ones.”
I catch her chin in my hands and pull her close so I can see this word, this promise, on her lips. “Always?”
“Always.” It’s a promise and a declaration of wild, untamable hope. I’m going to feel that with her. I’m going to feel everything with her. Not because I think the curse is broken. Not because I really think I’ll make it to the age of forty with my mind intact. But because I’m willing to live as if it could happen, if it means having even a few years with Eva. I’ll give her seven years. Or maybe only seven months. And when I’m lost to the world, when I leave her in mind, if not in body, she’ll forgive me.
“Kiss me again,” I murmur.
Eva leans down, her hair falling over my face, and gives me just what I want.
She gives me so much more.
21
FINN
There’s one final step to take before my life with Eva begins—my dad’s last meeting at Hughes Industries. His official goodbye. His retirement, to the public at least.
I plan it carefully, the way I’ve done everything carefully for years. Even though all I want to think about is my ring on Eva’s finger and the future we have together.
I’m finished putting a number of years on it.
I’m not naïve enough to forget the past, but I don’t have to let it darken everything.
My dad sits quietly in the second row of the SUV, reading a well-worn copy of Time magazine. It’s from the last year he worked, truly worked. Sometimes he slips back into a childhood state. Other times he knows we’re in the present. But mostly he lives in that last year forever. He likes reading the magazines. They feel new to him, even if they’re a decade old.
The driver up front has the music on low. An hour from now, I’ll be the new CEO of Hughes Industries. I can focus on his care without forcing him to visit as a charade.
“How are you feeling about going into the office?”
“Hmm?” He doesn’t look up from his magazine.
“Some of the high-performers at Hughes Industries are waiting at headquarters to congratulate you on a job well done. They’ve arranged a cake, and they’d like to shake your hand.”
“Oh, I’m sure I can give them that.” His smile is an echo of the one he used to wear in the office before his episodes began. My dad loved his work. He liked the energy of the company. That’s been hard for him to live without, but he chose this isolated existence.
He chose it back when he was still coherent enough to make choices.
Of course I’ve watched him age at home. The wrinkles and gray hair have come over time, as he wears pajamas and comfortable clothes around the house. Clothes he can’t hurt himself in.
The changes are more marked when he’s in a suit.
He still looked like a virile, active, middle-aged man when the curse hit him. His mind was gone, but his body looked strong. Now his body doesn’t look strong. He looks old.
“We’ll head up to the meeting room first thing. I’ll be right there with you. Don’t worry about remembering everybody’s names. Don’t worry about anything.”
Dad raises his eyebrows. “You nervous, Phineas?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. I know every person there. That’s the mark of a leader, you know. It’s not just about clocking in and out. Not about paperwork. It’s about people. You have to know what makes them tick. I know where every person in that office was born. Who their family is. What they want most in life.”
My stomach is in knots when the SUV pulls up to the curb outside the headquarters. Dad abandons his magazine on the seat and hops out onto the curb. The confidence in his stride looks real.
It is real.
He thinks he’s going to work. His mind has slipped back into the old, familiar pattern.
“Keep up, Phineas,” he calls, though I’m right beside him. “Lots to do today.”
I force a laugh. “We’re having a light day. Only a celebration.”
“Sure, sure. Then I’ll need to spend some time at my desk. My three o'clock gets testy if he’s kept waiting. We don’t get days off, Phineas. Not when our employees are hard at work. It’s important to set a good example. We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”
This is a mistake, a small voice whispers in the back of my mind. Dad’s getting attached to the idea of this fictional workday. It’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll forget it once we get to the retirement celebration or double down on the three o’clock meeting that doesn’t exist.
He steps into the elevator. If I’m going to stop it, now’s the time. It’s on the tip of my tongue to remember another meeting we need to attend elsewhere and take him home.
Dad puts his hand out to block the elevator door. “Can’t keep them waiting, Son.”
I follow him in.
The retirement party is made up of a carefully curated group of attendees. All the C-Suite members. CIO, CMO, CFO. An endless alphabet of them. There are also the most dedicated administrative assistants. Managers and members of other departments who’ve had personal experience working with Dad or who’ve helped push the company forward in a big way.
I spot Kevin in the crowd. Kevin, whose youngest daughter graduated from college. My father would have known a detail like that. Now he wouldn’t even know Kevin’s name.
Everyone breaks into applause as Dad and I step into the spacious room on the executive level.
Confusion flashes through his dark eyes, but he covers it with a grin. “Please. That’s enough. Thank you, everyone. You’re the ones who make this possible.”
I put a hand on his arm and raise my voice. “My father, Daniel Hughes, is the reason we’re here. The work we’ve done at Hughes Industries has changed lives all over the world, but none of it would have been possible without his vision, his work ethic, his knowledge. He taught me what it means to stay committed to a cause that matters, and I can say without a doubt that our work matters.”
The CFO comes forward and places a box in my hand.
“Dad, on behalf of everyone at Hughes Industries, I’d like to thank you for everything you did for us. Your performance set a high bar. I think we can all agree that nobody deserves to enjoy retirement more than you.” I embrace him and press the box into his hand. “Something to remember us by.”
Warm applause fills the room. My dad grins down at the box and blinks away the sheen from his eyes. “This is too much. I haven’t even gotten started.”
The people nearest to us laugh.
A frown tugs at the corner of his mouth. He wasn’t joking. He’s wondering why they’re laughing.
“You did an incredible job, Dad,” I say, trying to wrest his attention away.
“That’s right,” the CIO says, a middle-aged woman who was just a pencil pusher when dad was still himself. She offers his hand for my dad to shake. “It was an honor to work with you, Mr. Hughes. I hope you give retirement your all as well. I’m talking beach vacations and the best golf in the world.”
My dad clasps his hand. He doesn’t recognize her. His smile is too wide. It’s not real. “I will.”
He turns away from the conversation and is faced with another person, hand extended.
I hold my breath.
“Congratulations, Mr. Hughes. Wishing you the best. We’ll miss you around the office.”
My dad’s muscle memory seems to take over. He shakes the man’s hand. “You won’t have time to miss me. I need to get back upstairs after the party.”
“You’re a company man at heart, aren’t you?” I put my hand on his shoulder and give the man a grin. He smiles back, accepting the joke.
“Always have been,” Dad says. “Always will be.”
Everyone wants to say a few words, so they step forward in turn.
