I Do

by A. J. Pine

  Elaina flinched at his words, and something twisted in his gut, but it was like he was a runaway train—full-steam ahead, no matter what came out of his mouth.

  “Because I knew he wouldn’t judge me. He lives on another continent. I haven’t seen him in more than a year. But I knew if I called him, he’d show up—no questions asked. And hell, Elaina. That’s what he did. What if it was you on the other end of that call? What if I had called you?”

  Even in the fading light, he could see her skin pricked with goose bumps. He ached to press his palms to her shoulders and rub her flesh warm. But it was like the beach was made of quicksand, rooting them in their anger and stubbornness.

  At first she said nothing, so he waited. What was the rush? It wasn’t as if there was a restaurant full of people waiting for them.

  Finally, Elaina let out a long sigh, which to Duncan was admission enough. But still, he waited.

  “I do not know,” she admitted.

  But he did. Duncan knew he loved this woman, but he also knew she would have chosen anger over understanding. He knew from her narrowed eyes as soon as he saw her that she had already judged him.

  “I don’ know where tha’ leaves us,” he said. Then he opened his bag, the one he risked missing his own wedding to save, and pulled out the tartan scarf. She didn’t flinch when he took a step toward her, close enough for him to drape the fabric over the pebbled skin of her shoulders.

  “This is why I was late,” he said, letting his hands linger on top of the scarf—on her. “It’s why I look the way I do. I let the bag out of my sight for one bloody second, and it was stolen. I chased the arsehole. I did. But I guess you can see that didn’t turn out like I’d planned.” He patted the messenger bag slung across his body. When he stepped back, she grabbed the tartan edges tight. Elaina’s eyes shone with not-yet-fallen tears, and something caught in Duncan’s throat. It wasn’t a sob, because if there was one thing Duncan McAllister did not do, it was cry. On a beach. In what felt like some sort of tragic scene in a romantic movie.

  He swallowed hard, unsure what this moment was or what it meant for them. All he knew was that this didn’t feel much like a celebration.

  “I look like shite,” he said. “You’re right about that. But I feel like shite, too. I’m going in there and saying hello to my mum and dad—to yours, too. I’m going to have some food, maybe a pint or two, and then I’m going to the hotel. I think we need to decide what’s happening tomorrow, Elaina. I think we need to—”

  “Duncan,” she said, her voice cracking on the first syllable. But he shook his head.

  “I don’t want you to have to pretend with me,” he said. “I don’t want you to expect me to mess up and then judge me when I do. And I definitely don’t want you to wish I was anyone other than who I am. Because I never wished that about you.”

  He held out his hand, and she looked down at it, then back up at him.

  “Let’s walk in together, aye? No matter what happens now, I love you. And I know it’s not been an easy day. So we’ll eat—and drink—and when you’re ready, we’ll talk.”

  Elaina laced her fingers through his, her skin cold against his warmth.

  Duncan waited for some other response. What? He didn’t know.

  Elaina Tripoli collected herself. She didn’t cry. She no longer seemed like she wanted to yell. And she followed him inside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Griffin

  Griffin sat at an empty two-top in a far corner of the unused restaurant. Maggie didn’t follow his lead.

  “Please sit?” he said, but it came out like a question.

  Freaking Duncan. Maybe they should have skipped the champagne on the short flight. Maybe when a guy was having one of the shittiest days of his life, it wasn’t the time to unload personal secrets on him. Maybe he never should have kept a secret from Maggie in the first place. But here they were, him sitting, pleading—and her barely able to look at him.

  “Pippi. Please.”

  She sat, and she even let her eyes meet his, but those emerald eyes that always grounded him, that let him know how much he was loved, were distant. Unrecognizable.

  “I’m sitting,” she said. “But you don’t get to call me that, Griffin. Not now.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” He had a captive audience, and at least that was a start. “Can I ask…what did Duncan tell you?”

  Maggie scoffed out a bitter laugh, something so unlike her, and it felt like a needle pricking his skin. He’d brought this out in her, and he hated himself for it.

  “Do you need to check to make sure your story matches up with his?” she asked.

  He shook his head. He was going about this all wrong. But didn’t she know him enough to understand that when it came to her, his intentions were always good? Everything came from a place of loving her, a place he didn’t know was capable of existing inside him until she entered his life.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Maggie…I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t mean to, anyway.”

  She just sat there, a statue, eyes on him, yet some sort of invisible barrier kept her from seeing him.

  He reached into the pocket of his jeans. God, look at her in that dress. He was travel weary, and he knew he needed a shower. He felt out of place in her clean elegance. Her undeniable beauty—and her never-wavering honesty.

  “Here,” he said, sliding the folded piece of paper across the table. “I was just waiting for the right time to tell you.”

  She unfolded the congratulatory letter, her movements slow and deliberate. And then she read.

  Upon reading the first line, Maggie gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. She couldn’t hold back the involuntary smile, but she shuttered the expression as quickly as it came. Even when she was angry at him, when she felt the sting of betrayal, she was happy for him. But delaying the truth had robbed her of sharing in his joy.

  When she finished reading, she refolded the letter and slid it back across the table to him. It took her a few moments to look up, and when she did, she wore a smile—one that didn’t reach her eyes and didn’t make that spot on top of her nose crinkle the way he loved.

  “I’m proud of you,” she said. “I was afraid when Duncan said Washington that you’d gone back to your father. But this? This is really good. I’m sure you’ll be really happy in D.C.”

  Her fingers were still on the paper, and she fidgeted with it in the silence.

  He laid a hand on hers to stop her nervous motion.

  “I didn’t accept it, Maggie. Not yet. I wouldn’t—not without you.”

  Her smile morphed into one he knew was real, but it was also sad.

  She bit her lip. “But you applied for it without me.”

  He had, and at the time it didn’t seem like a big deal.

  “I didn’t think I’d get it,” he said. “It was just a what if? It wasn’t anything we needed to talk about because it wasn’t going to happen.”

  She pulled her hand away and crossed her arms over her chest, squeezing herself tight. Griffin wanted those to be his arms around her. And they would be soon, right? He hadn’t done something irrevocable. Had he?

  “It did happen,” she said. “When did the letter come?”

  “When you came home sick.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened, and she pushed back her chair and stood from the table.

  “And you didn’t think I could handle it?”

  He rose to meet her and placed his hands on her cheeks.

  “It wasn’t the right time to talk about something this big. You were… And then we…”

  The words weren’t coming out right, so he pulled out the big guns and tried to kiss her. If they could just reconnect, she’d understand. But Maggie’s hands were on his wrists like lightning, forcing him to drop his hands to his sides.

  “I get it,” she said. “I was too much of a mess then to tell me. And then all those hours we spent on the plane together when I felt perfectly fine, you just assum
ed I’d fall apart? That I couldn’t handle the news? That I was weak?” Maggie took a step back, her hard stare rooting him in place. “It’s not just the letter, Griffin. You didn’t even tell me you were applying for this fellowship in the first place.” She paused for a long breath. “You convinced me that you believed in me,” she said.

  “I do!” he blurted out. “Jesus, Maggie. I have always believed in you. I still believe in you.” His voice was frantic. Irrevocable was starting to feel like a real possibility, and he was clawing, tooth and nail, to make her hear.

  She shook her head, and he knew he was losing his grip. They were on a ledge, and she was about to fall off. Or worse—she was going to knock him off and watch him fall.

  “There are only two explanations for you keeping this from me. The first is because you still see me as I saw myself for two years—weak. The second…is that this had nothing to do with me in the first place, that you’re leaving and waiting for the right time to tell me.”

  Griffin dropped both hands to the table and bent forward, trying to catch his breath. He wanted to argue with her on both counts. The truth was, he didn’t see her as weak. That was never the case. But he had placed her in his own glass cabinet—beautiful and fragile, only to be taken out with the utmost care. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d just proven to her that’s what he’d done.

  And what about the second part?

  “You’re right,” he said, straightening to face her, and her breathing hitched at his words. “Not the way you think you are, though. You’re the strongest person I know, Maggie. You might not believe me, but that doesn’t mean I’m lying.” He ran a hand through his hair. “No matter how twisted their means, the only way my parents know how to love me is to protect me from fucking up. My sisters, too. People have always picked up the pieces for me until I finally had the balls to step out on my own. But I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far, huh? Guess I can’t escape being a Reed when it’s all I know.”

  He let out a bitter laugh. Maggie was the catalyst for him to change his life. After always taking the easy way out, Griffin cut himself off from his family’s financial support, choosing a job that paid next to nothing but made him happy instead of working for his father. All he’d ever wanted to do was break free from the hold his family had on him and be his own person. But he still couldn’t escape being just like them, treating Maggie how they’d always treated him.

  “I thought by waiting I was protecting you—”

  “I don’t need protecting,” she interrupted.

  He nodded. “I know.” Then he let out a long sigh. “But I was protecting me, too.”

  “From what?”

  He knew she was still mad, but that didn’t stop him. He grabbed her hand and squeezed, bringing her knuckles to his lips. He just needed at least one part of her close, to maintain the connection before it was lost for good.

  “From wanting two things I might not be able to have.”

  “You have to take this fellowship,” she said. “You can’t turn down something like this.”

  He kept his lips pressed to her skin as he spoke. “I can’t go without you,” he said. “I can’t chase this dream if you don’t chase it with me.”

  Maggie inhaled, and he heard the shaking in her breath. Not a good sign. He closed his eyes as he waited for her to respond.

  “It’s not my dream,” she said. “And I love you, more than you can imagine, but I can’t let you be my only dream. And I can’t let you jeopardize yours by thinking you need to protect me.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but she cut him off.

  “You just admitted it yourself. The only thing that’s changed in my daily life is adding more classes, and you’re already afraid I’m going to break. What will happen if I uproot my life and go with you? How will you be able to focus on you if you’re always worrying about me?”

  He pulled her to him now, and she didn’t protest. Griffin pressed his lips to her forehead, then her eyes and cheeks. Finally her lips. She kissed him back.

  “It’s only a year,” she said, but there was nothing convincing in her tone. Griffin had always found something special about kissing away her tears, tasting the salt on his tongue along with everything Maggie. Yet somehow he knew it that night he opened the letter just as he did now—these tears meant the end of something. Maybe not the end of them, not yet. Though as close as he held her…and as much as she clung to him as well…the distance began to grow, and would eventually put hundreds of miles between them.

  “Yeah,” he whispered, sure that he would lose it if he tried to speak out loud. “It’s only a year.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Miles

  “What is this?” Miles asked, sipping his beer. His fingertips brushed the edge of a picture frame, but instead of a photograph, inside it sat an acceptance letter to the University of Virginia.

  Alex was popping the top off his own bottle. He shrugged as he made his way to the small space that doubled as a kitchen eating area and small living space.

  “I’m going to guess that you can read,” he said to Miles, a tightness to his voice he seemed to want to disguise with his disarming smile.

  So Miles decided to prove Alex’s assumption. He read aloud.

  “Dear Mr. Karas… We are delighted to welcome you to the University of Virginia’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as the Cavaliers’ men’s soccer team—”

  Alex tipped the frame over softly so it laid facedown on the shelf where it sat.

  “Just proving you right,” Miles said. “Been reading since I was three. I’m precocious like that. Do you find my precociousness adorable?” he teased, and Alex ignored him, brushing past his shoulder and collapsing onto a small couch.

  “So you went to the University of Virginia?” Miles asked.

  Alex shook his head, then let out a long breath.

  “I went to the City University of New York and then came back to Greece for culinary training, the only thing my father would pay for.”

  Miles sat down next to him. He hadn’t wanted to know Alex’s name a few hours ago, and now here he was in the man’s apartment, on the brink of learning his history. His first instinct was to kiss him, to keep the past at bay even if it was only Alex’s and not his own. But when Alex turned to face him, their knees bumping as he did, Miles could tell Alex wanted, maybe needed, to tell him the rest of the story, so he let him.

  “What happened with Virginia?” Miles asked.

  Alex took a swig of his beer.

  “I broke my leg the spring before my first year, playing on my secondary school’s team.”

  Miles laid a hand on Alex’s knee, the gesture so natural he hadn’t realized he’d done it until Alex let his own hand rest on top of it.

  “They took away your scholarship for an injury?” Miles asked, still not understanding.

  Alex shook his head. “They took away my scholarship because I had to have three surgeries to fix my leg, because I’m lucky I can even walk on my own. Playing again was never an option, which meant the University of Virginia wasn’t an option anymore, either.”

  Miles’s heart twisted at the thought of losing something like that.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Shit, I’m really sorry.”

  Alex took another swig from his bottle.

  “I’m not,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I spent a long time wallowing. I couldn’t even attend university the first year I was supposed to because of the surgeries and missing deadlines for applying anywhere for that fall semester. So yeah, I wallowed for a good few years until I found cooking. And then life just sort of clicked.”

  He squeezed Miles’s hand over his knee, and Miles felt something shift in the air between them.

  “Wait,” he said. “If you’re not sorry that it happened, why did it bother you when I started reading the letter?”

  Alex drained the last of his bottle and then set it on the table next to the frame, which he promptly righted.


  “I love that letter,” he said. “It’s a reminder that losing something doesn’t mean losing everything, but I haven’t heard the words on that page in a long time. Hearing it in your voice? I don’t know, it was the past and the present colliding like it hasn’t before.”

  Alex shifted so he sat straight instead of reclined against the cushions. Both hands now free, he brought a hand to Miles’s neck, urging him closer. Miles didn’t resist, bowing his head toward Alex, who stopped him before their lips could touch.

  “I showed you mine,” he said. “You show me yours.”

  “What?” Miles asked. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want more than your name,” Alex admitted. “I want some little piece to attach to the memory of what you taste like.” He flicked his tongue against Miles’s bottom lip.

  “Why?” Miles didn’t like where this was going.

  “Why not?” Alex asked. “No expectations,” he added. “Just give me a sense of who you are.”

  Miles squeezed his eyes shut. Because there was an expectation. Alex had invited him to stay for the weekend, but what did Miles think? That the guy would be satisfied with nothing but a name for three days? Still, he hadn’t signed up for this. The more he gave to Alex, the less safe he would be.

  “I’m the guy who’s shit when it comes to sharing,” he said, and Alex brushed his lips with a small kiss.

  “Were you always?” he asked, and Miles couldn’t help it. He shook his head. He wanted Alex to know at least this.

  “Well then,” Alex said, kissing him again. “That’s a start.”

  Miles lay on his back, hand behind his head. He figured he should probably text Maggie and make sure she was doing okay without him. Hell, he didn’t even know if Griffin had made it back yet, but he wasn’t sure where exactly his jeans were. Or his shirt. His boxer briefs were probably nearest, since they’d been the last to come off, but he couldn’t really be sure. One thing was certain—he wouldn’t have access to his phone until he went on a naked scavenger hunt for his clothes.