And they’d giggled. Goddamned giggled.
Mom gave her a nudge. “Also, I’m reasonably sure there’s a geek down in Fayetteville who’d love you, too, if you let him.”
Meg stared at her rings, spun them idly for a minute, and cast her gaze toward her mother. “What makes you think that?”
Mom sipped her coffee and stared back. She stared so long, Meg gave up on her answering and taped the bottom of another box.
“You really have to ask that?” Mom finally returned.
“I wouldn’t waste my breath otherwise.”
“Then that’s sad, if you don’t know what it feels like for a man to love you as much as he does.”
Meg’s hand with the tape dispenser stilled.
“No man is going to inconvenience himself that much if he didn’t care. Doesn’t matter how good the sex is.”
“Mom.”
Mom put her hands up in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m speaking hypothetically, but I’m not going to pretend you’re a chaste little angel. I know under different circumstances you wouldn’t even have considered him. But fate is a weird thing. Unpredictable. Sometimes it kicks us in the gut, and other times it raises us up to euphoria. I think you’re overdue for a bit of euphoria, princess.”
Meg swallowed and set down the tape dispenser. She laced her fingers together, spinning her thumbs around and around each other, trying to make sense of it all.
Did he love her? She thought she’d known what that felt like, and then her derelict of a husband gave her reason enough to believe he’d never loved her at all. Maybe she wouldn’t know reciprocal love if it smacked her in the face.
She knew one thing for sure, though.
She loved Seth. Every bit of him, even the mangled idioms. She loved watching Toby bloom in his presence and chuckling at how he answered every one of Toby’s questions, no matter how trifling. No matter how repetitive.
Somehow, in the past couple of months, he’d managed to seep into every aspect of her life. Maybe that’s what Curt’s mania felt like—being so infatuated with the idea of something epic, and yet fearing it was unreachable.
This mania was like a disease.
Rozhkov’s Disease, maybe.
“Perhaps I am,” she said in a quiet voice, but Mom heard it anyway.
“Having someone love you—for you not to have to an uphill climb all the time… That doesn’t make you weak, princess. It’s okay to let him love you.”
“I don’t know how to do this. What to do from here.”
“Hmm.” Mom returned to the kitchen and poured a generous splash of half-and-half into her mug. “You’ve got a mess, but from where I’m standing it doesn’t look like much of one. Toby could make a bigger mess in his sleep.”
At the mention of his name, Toby stuck his head out of his bedroom door and looked at them both. “What?”
“Nothing, Toby. Just wondering if you needed a nap,” Mom lied.
“Nope.” Toby closed the door.
At least Toby knew what he wanted. Oh, to be four.
Chapter 18
Meg’s heart seemed to beat so quickly that it pulsated in one nonstop thrum. Even with her hand over her breast, she couldn’t tell where one beat ended and the next began. “All right. I’m going to do this.” She’d driven all the way down to Fayetteville for this, and being forced to concede—to give in—unsettled her.
Her body temperature had spiked high enough that she’d tested the limits of her antiperspirant, and it had failed. She dragged her hand across her forehead and shifted her weight as heavy footsteps echoed in the house.
“Please be kind,” she whispered to the door, and then it opened.
Seth filled the doorway, dressed in tattered plaid pajama bottoms, a T-shirt advertising his gym, and bare feet. His hair was deliciously messy, falling into tired eyes that widened a bit more the longer he stared.
She’d missed that face so much. The boyish curiosity of it. The way it softened whenever she engaged him.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Megan. It’s so early. Where’s Toby?”
“May I come in?”
He cringed and moved out of the door. “Yes, of course you can. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I just am.”
“No. You’re not.” She moved tentatively across the threshold, taking in the clutter of the living room: mismatched sofas, battered tables, lamps that probably hadn’t been fashionable since the Miami Vice craze. The look, all pulled together, said, Hopeless PhD. She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Would you like some coffee? Tea?”
“Coffee. You know how I take it.”