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“You were never supposed to outshine him!” Ethan blurted and Maggie froze. Even her heart stopped beating as his eyes went soft and his voice dropped. “You were never supposed to do more than he did. You weren’t supposed to be more. You sure as hell weren’t supposed to earn more. I know men like that. I come from a long line of men exactly like that, so believe me when I say he needed you to be less than him, and you were always going to be more.”
“There’s no way, no universe, no reality in which you aren’t the brightest star in the whole damn sky, and . . .” His cheeks flushed. His hand shook, and he looked away like, suddenly, he was the one who was embarrassed. “That’s all I wanted to say.”
The elevator started to move, but Ethan wanted to go back to standing still because that was the first time in a long time that he had felt like moving forward.
Maggie was carrying a candelabra, and six flickering tapers framed her face in a kind of golden glow; she looked ethereal but also filthy, covered in cobwebs and dust. And she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Ethan was suddenly grateful for time loops and blizzards and bridges that fall down under the weight of too much snow.
If you were missing, I’d find you. I’d tear the house down stone by stone. I’d rip apart every room and scour every field and I wouldn’t stop. I would never stop.”
“It was snowing and your hair was . . .” He gestured to the top of his head like he, a bestselling novelist, had forgotten the word damp. “You said you looked like a Victorian street urchin.” She let out a silent laugh. “How did I really look?” But Ethan grew serious, thinking . . . remembering . . . deciding. “I thought you looked like forever.”
She looked like a woman who had plotted this out, spotted the twist and knew what was coming. Like someone who had a trick or two up her sleeve. She looked like Eleanor. But she also looked like someone who trusted him. Who was waiting on him. Who needed him. Wanted him. Like they were a team. And for Ethan, a man who had spent his whole life trying to be enough, it should have been terrifying to realize that he was best when he was half of a whole. When the rest of him was her.
