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“You’re still not answering my question.” “Life isn’t about answers, Matty. It’s about asking the right questions.” “That’s poetic. Now I definitely know something’s wrong.” “What can I say? You’re rubbing off on me.”
The door flew open as Hamish reemerged, out of breath and drenched from the rain. “The lass is in here!” What happened next felt as if June were out of her body. Behind Hamish came someone else. The man rushed to June’s side, a familiar object in hand. “I need to unbutton your jeans. It’s more effective that way,” he said in a Scottish accent that was, thank God, understandable. June noticed the man’s shirt, which clung wetly to his chest: Knockmoral Fire and Rescue Service. “It’s a bit early in our relationship, don’t you think?” June said, though the swelling in her mouth muffled the words.
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“You’re not going to die,” he said. “How do you know?” “Because I won’t let you. There’s only one thing I hate more than death.” He pressed the EpiPen hard on June’s leg, activating the auto-injector and sending epinephrine into her system. “What’s that?” June asked. “Paperwork.” He brushed his hands together, satisfied. “The ambulance is just ’round the corner,” he said to Hamish. “Good. I’ll follow in my car.” The man nodded. “I’ll let Sophie know what happened.” “You’re a lifesaver, Lennox Gordon,” Hamish said. “I owe you.”
“I can give you a fancy camera,” Ms. Flores once said to June. “But no matter how good the equipment, it still only takes pictures. It can’t see. Only you can do that. That’s the job of an artist.”
small pile of ash.
“I’m sorry” was never on time. It was always too late. Those two words haunted June.
David explained. “Happily ever after never happens when people do what they’re supposed to do, love. It’s when they deviate that the plot really gets interesting.”
“He’s not a plot twist most women can say no to,” Eva whispered in June’s ear.
“I’ll see you at home, Peanut.” “Don’t be so sure. I might run away with a Viking tonight.” “You won’t.” “And why not?” In a flash, Lennox had June by the hips again, pulling her close. “Because I warned them that if anyone touched you, I’d rip his head off with my bare hands.” He released her. June could barely steady herself in her shock. “Night-night, Peanut.”
Lennox had a hold on June like no one else in her life, and deep down, June knew they would implode and destroy themselves at each other’s hands. And yet the idea of letting him go . . .
“Be sure, Peanut,” Lennox whispered in her ear. June wondered at the nickname, how something she was never meant to have had brought her to this moment, led her to Lennox. Lennox had taken her kryptonite and made it insatiable, irresistible. She begged him to say her name again and again.
She hated that she instantly compared the two men. Was this how her mind would work from now on, every male touch weighed against Lennox’s in some masochistic form of torture?
“We ignore what we don’t want to change.”
“You’ve always been ridiculous.” “I prefer the word ‘spirited.’ People do crazy things when they’re in love.” “Don’t I know it.” An intense look came over Matt’s face, making June feel suddenly bashful.
June then realized how odd it was that she and Lennox had run into each other. Of all the places in Knockmoral, why did he come to that path? She asked him. Without a glance at June, Lennox said, “I thought he might be looking for you.”
“There’s as much value in the word ‘no’ as there is in the word ‘yes.’ Maybe even more, because we, as women, so rarely say no.”
“Turns out, saying no sucks,” she said to Eva. “That’s why so many people won’t say it. They’d rather spare themselves the pain than walk through it to something better.”
“Don’t be naive. We’re all characters, June. If something’s not working, it’s time to reimagine yourself.
Sometimes, we get so stuck in who we think we are, we forget to take in our lives from another view. You aren’t a reflection, June, like a flat mirror. You are a three-dimensional person. You’ve just gotten used to seeing only one side of yourself.”
June couldn’t meet his eye. “I’d give up anything if it meant that my brother was still alive and healthy. And I’d do the same for you.” “Peanut.” Lennox stood in front of June, just a breath between their bodies. June steeled herself. “Do you trust me with your life?” There was no one on earth she trusted more than Lennox Gordon. “Then trust me with my own,” Lennox insisted. “Can you do that? I promise I’ll save myself, every damn day, if it means I get to have you.”
Lennox wasn’t just June’s person. He was her destination, her anchor. “Can we go home now?” he asked. But June was already home with him. Wherever they went, as long as they were together, that place would simply be the next setting in their love story.
