“Seriously?” A wide smile highlighted his layered laugh lines but it quickly dimmed and his expression shifted to one of consternation. “I thought you weren’t ready to move in together.”
Ryleigh licked her lips. “I just needed some time to think it over. And I realized that…” Her voice cracked as tears filled her eyes and she let out an involuntary laugh at the overt show of emotion.
“What?”
“That I can’t stand being away from you. Even for a summer.” She wondered if all of the words were clear.
Though, perfect diction should not be expected from someone spouting hysterics.
Peter wiped away her tears with the pad of this thumb, whispering, “Hey, it’s good to know I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
Stop crying. This is his day. Lighten the mood.
“Anyway, it’s not like we’re really moving in together, you know? It’s a temporary situation. I’ll be your RFN—roommate for now.”
“I’m going to pretend I heard ‘trial run’ instead of ‘temporary situation.’”
“Is that a yes?” Nerves bubbled up in her throat and burst forth. “I’m kind of on a deadline here, and if it’s a no from you I’ll have to call my parents and—”
His index finger pressed into her lips. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, hand transitioning to cup her face. “A thousand times yes.”
Living with him over the summer would allow her to monitor his grieving though she kept that bit to herself because he had pointed out on many occasions that he was not ‘a helpless headcase who needed looking after.’ Every night, they would be able to fall asleep in the same bed and wake up together each morning. It was a fairy tale.
Well, as close to a fairy tale as you can get at a funeral.
Peter pushed himself off the deck, retrieved his shoes from the yard and slipped them on. “It’s boiling out here. Do you want to go up the street and get a coffee or something?”
Ryleigh glanced at the house. “What about your family? Should we tell them we’re stepping out?”
“Once the Rosenfelds and Levinskys get to talking, they don’t stop. Trust me, they won’t have moved an inch when we get back.”
She slid on her heels and trailed behind Peter through the gate that led out of the backyard. Strolling along the residential street, their hands connected, fingers and palms fusing together to form a custom cast of their love.
His gray eyes lit with an inner glow. “Let’s hope I outlive my dad, for your sake.”
Leave it to Peter to make a morbidly humorous comment on the day of his father’s funeral. Ryleigh had no trouble identifying the promise amid the cynicism.
A promise to love her until his heart stopped beating.
Author’s note:
Okay, dolls. Here’s the deal.
What you just read on the previous page? In my mind, that is the ending. Fade to black. Curtains falling.
However…
I understand where I’ve decided to end the book may upset some romance readers. Ending a book at a funeral? Not too romantic. Well, unless you’re me, of course.
Need things to end on a lighter note?
Do not fret, my darlings. I wrote an epilogue just for you. Flip to the next page for your happily ever after.
Mom: we got to the stadium a little early. can’t believe this day is here! we’re so proud of you!!
“Has anyone seen my tassel?” Ryleigh cried out as she peered beneath a stack of Janet’s gardening magazines.
Nothing.
She had ransacked their two-bedroom apartment and still found no sign of the missing blue and maize accessory.
It was laughable that Janet kept the magazines around. There were few varieties of plants that could sustain life in their scarcely windowed seventh-floor unit. Giving up her green thumb was one of the many sacrifices she had made a year ago when she sold her home in Santa Cruz and moved in with them.
“Keep looking. I’m sure you’ll find it,” Peter called from his post in the kitchen, where he stood nursing a cup of coffee.
On a normal day, Ryleigh would have been irritated with his lack of assistance but today she was short on time and patience. Her parents had beat her to her own graduation, for God’s sake.
Purse slung over her shoulder, Janet poked her head around the corner into the living room. “I’m going to head downstairs and wait in the car.”
After straightening the magazines, Ryleigh planted her hands on her hips. They should have been given an award for the frequency with which they lost items in their under 1,000 square foot space. “Hey Jan, you haven’t seen my tassel, have you? I remember laying it out last night but now I can’t find it.”
A glance at the clock revealed that, at most, they had 10 more minutes before leaving for campus would be non-negotiable. And the sticklers in charge of graduation had made it clear that if anything was out of place with your attire, you may as well forget about setting foot on the stage.
“No dear, I haven’t. I’ll take a look in the car and give you a ring if it turns up.”
The door clicked shut and Ryleigh’s anxiety intensified tenfold. Her stomach convulsed in preliminary response to whatever colorful reaction would arise from her father upon the grad staffer’s refusal to let her participate in the ceremony. He would be devastated not to see her walk across the same stage on which he had graduated decades earlier.
Ryleigh swallowed the vomit-inducing lump lodged in her throat and regarded the clock once again. She had seven minutes to uncover the object threatening to ruin the finale of her college career.
Finding it took seven seconds.
A lone, thin blue string suspended from the corner of Peter’s slack pocket. He was in his own world with his coffee, scrolling through the Ann Arbor Times news app on his phone and oblivious to the fact that rage scaled Ryleigh’s body like a test-your-strength carnival game.
She snatched the tassel out of its hiding place, shaking it in the air. “Peter, what the hell? What is wrong with you?”
His eyes swept over her and despite her impending lateness and frustration toward him, she went jelly legged.
“I’d hide it again to see you bending down all over the apartment in that dress.”
This occasion demanded a more mature outfit than the frilly number Ryleigh had worn beneath her high school graduation gown. Though they were both a stark white, the dress she currently sported was the antithesis of the other. The material conformed to her every curve and a deep ‘v’ neckline plunged past her usual comfort zone.
Nodding to his cell, she said, “Reyes gives you the day off and you’re still stalking the headlines.”
Peter downed the rest of the coffee and set the mug in the sink, kissing her forehead as he brushed past her. He shouted through the hall while toeing into his loafers.
“Do you know what it’s like to walk into a newsroom when you’ve had your head in the sand for 24 hours? I believe the phrase is current affairs, baby.” Baby, a rare yet delightful slip from his ‘only in the bedroom’ vocabulary. “Now move your sweet behind, Cinderella, before the Sentra turns into a pumpkin.”
Blue and maize balloons rose into the sky and a chorus of hoots and screams thundered around Ryleigh as she took off running in her heels. It was a wonder she did not sprain an ankle sprinting across the artificial turf at breakneck speed. A lightness enshrouded her as she drew closer to the 20-yard line, the wind battering her curls.
Though four people whom she loved comprised her entourage, she barreled into the arms of the grinning schmuck holding a bundle of pink snapdragons.
The petals tickled her skin as Peter embraced her. Hand tangling in Ryleigh’s hair, the lines around his eyes crinkled. “College grad. Welcome to the real world, Branson.”
He dipped down for a kiss that someone had the nerve to interrupt.
“We’re here, too.” Charlotte performed an exaggerated, over-the-head wave.
Her chest tightened at havin
g been reduced to a child on such a pivotal day, but Peter’s lingering touch and desire-darkened gaze as he surrendered the flowers reminded her she was anything but.
“Look at you, a real Wolverine.” Dexter pulled her in for a quick hug. He handed her a massive bouquet that must have been custom made as the flowers were dyed in the school’s colors. It made the snapdragons look like they had been picked by the side of the road. She preferred minimal and heartfelt to flashy, but cherished both offerings. “I’m guessing this is a bad time to sell you on grad school, but I’m not giving up hope. I had a wonderful graduate experience here.”
Her parents had been appalled when, two years prior, she informed them she was majoring in English with a minor in creative writing—because dentists and nurses do not breed vegan latte-sipping, Chaucer-reading hipster children.
Even today, their congratulations were muted by the silent fear that their daughter was certifiably unemployable.
Bouncing lightly on her toes, Ryleigh suppressed a smile over the news her parents had yet to hear: her final semester internship ended with a job offer. By the middle of June, she would be working for the largest literary journal in Michigan.
She planned to tell them in a few days, when the five of them would be cooped up in a rental home on Lake Huron.
Janet produced a small cloth from her pocket, unfolding it to reveal a silver chain necklace with a petite opal pendant. Blinking down at the jewelry, she said, “Gideon gave this to me the night of my college graduation.” Her glossy eyes flicked to Ryleigh. “I want you to have it.”
Legs shaking, she squeaked, “Janet, I couldn’t possibly—”
“Nonsense, honey.” She draped it around Ryleigh’s neck and moved to secure the clasp. “I’ve had some of the best memories of my life in this necklace. I don’t want it to sit in a drawer and turn to dust.” Janet took a step back to assess how it looked. The corners of her mouth lifted. “Beautiful. Just like you.”
Ryleigh’s vision turned cloudy as she toyed with the opal, glancing between the people who had shown up for her.
Her family, old and new.
Dexter clapped his hands. “Alright. Let’s get a move on, folks. We have dinner reservations.”
“Dinner will have to wait. We haven’t even taken pictures yet.” Fishing her phone out of her purse, Charlotte fixed him with a self-satisfied smile. “Let’s get one of you and Ryleigh first.”
Ryleigh and her father shuffled closer together, each snaking an arm around the other and tweaking their camera-ready positions. At least a dozen other families loitered in the immediate vicinity. She thought of all those people as her mother adjusted her phone to the proper angle, strangers who would forever star as extras in this memory.
Her mother counted down, “3...2…”
One never came.
Peter dropped to his knee before Ryleigh and time stood still. There was no past nor future, only this carefully preserved pres—
He fiddled with her heel strap, gave her ankle a pat and winked. “All set. It must have come loose when you bolted over here.”
A veil of mortification slipped over her. He knelt and Ryleigh ignored the improbability. Peter was not the biggest proponent of marriage and yet she let that inflated hope run free and now she paid the price, falling hard from the fizzled out allure of the ‘what if.’
How was Ryleigh to spend the evening celebrating when her heart felt as if it had been cranked through a meat grinder?
Her father tightened his hold on her. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, Peter. When you promised to hold off proposing until she graduated, I didn’t mean five minutes after she’d been handed her diploma.”
“Dexter Samuel,” her mother snapped. Her head cocked to the side, eyes widening to their limit.
Ryleigh’s humiliation and heartbreak were swept up in a storm surge of warmth. An electric current buzzed through her bones and the noise in Michigan Stadium faded to a whisper as Peter gave a slight shrug and nervous laughter fled his lungs.
With one eye shut, he screwed his mouth up to the side. “Any chance you could pretend you didn’t hear that?”
Hot tears pelted her chest.
“Hear what?”
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What’s next? I’m currently working on a dark romance trilogy which begins releasing early 2022.
Here’s a teaser for the first book:
A university psychiatrist with a shady past and a headstrong undergrad come together for a semester-long mentorship, but complications quickly arise when the student uncovers dark rumors about her mentor.
Acknowledgments
I was an ill-tempered ball of chaos throughout the process of creating this story, and I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who put up with my miserable ass.
You’re the realest.
Special thanks to my husband, Justin, with whom I speak of things that do not exist far too often. You’re a saint for putting up with my incessant, fictional chatter. Had we never met, this series may not have happened. I mean, a journalist falling for a high schooler, who comes up with this stuff? But we lived much differently than the ink spilled across these pages. That’s the beauty of fiction.
Thank you to my family and my in-laws, all of whom were more supportive when the first book dropped than I could have ever imagined. Your love and kind words gave me a kick to keep going.
Thank you to Wesley Parker for your good-humored mocking when I hadn’t met a self-imposed deadline for the hundredth time and made me realize when I was being too hard on myself. B.B.&L.S. loading!
To my wonderful team of beta readers, who read the unfinished version of this book and lived to tell the tale.
Thank you to all of my internet writing buds who offered encouraging words while I was immersed in the pit of hellfire we call editing: Dave Ayla, Matthew Hanover, Amber Hook, Shamika Lindsay, Megan Montgomery, Lanona Walker.
And of course, I’d like to thank my readers. Thank you for taking a chance on this series and its characters. I hope Rosenfeld has weaseled his way into your heart, and that you won’t soon forget him.
I know I won’t.
About the Author
Leighann Hart has been an avid adorer of fiction since the age of 5, when her father started reading the Harry Potter series to her and she fell in love with the brooding Severus Snape.
And that love bred a shameful number of Snamione fanfics in the coming years.
Now, she writes her own stories with snarky, though usually sensitive, male leads and brainy, rebellious heroines.
She enjoys coffee, sushi, and long walks through the aisles of used bookstores—in that order.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2LG24FhPAFXg46HnVNRmrr
Goodreads: https://goodreads.com/author/show/2048551a3.Leighann_Hart
Having Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Duet Book 2) Page 20
