He exhaled softly. “I expect you have an idea of what you’re going to tell him.”

“I’m gonna keep it simple. With ‘Golden’ and my engagement, I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to see each other socially. I hope we’ll be friends and keep in touch, but e-mail and texts are better, unless you’re with me.”

He was silent long enough that I thought maybe the call had dropped. “Gideon?”

“I need to know if you’re afraid to see him.”

Uneasy, I took another drink. The coffee had cooled, but I barely tasted it anyway. “I don’t want to fight about Brett.”

“So your solution is to avoid him.”

“You and I have enough shit to fight about without throwing him into the mix. He’s not worth it.”

Gideon was quiet again. This time, I waited him out.

When his voice came again, it was confident and decisive. “I can live with that, Eva.”

My shoulders relaxed and something inside me eased. And then, paradoxically, my chest tightened. I remembered what he’d said to me once, that he’d live with me loving another man just so long as he had me.

He loved me so much more than he loved himself. It broke my heart that he’d sell himself short like that. It made it impossible to hold myself back.

“You’re everything to me,” I breathed. “I think about you all the time.”

“It’s no different for me.”

“Really?” I lowered my voice further, trying to keep it down. “Because I have it so bad for you. I get—well, hot. Like I’m overcome with this desperate need to be touching you. My brain scatters and I have to take a minute to ride it out, but it’s so hard to deal. So many times I’ve almost dropped whatever I’m doing to get to you.”

“Eva—”

“I have fantasies about barging into one of your meetings and just running right into you. Have I told you that? When the craving is really bad, I can almost feel you pulling at me.”

I rushed on when I heard him growl softly. “I lose my breath every time I see you. If I close my eyes, I can hear your voice. I woke up this morning and I panicked a little because you’re so far away. I would’ve given anything to be able to get to you. I wanted to cry because I couldn’t.”

“Christ. Eva, please—”

“If you’re going to worry about anything, Gideon, it should be me. Because I can’t be rational when it comes to you. I’m crazy about you. Literally. I can’t think about a future without you—it freaks me out.”

“Goddamn it. You’ll never be without me. We’re going to grow old together. Die together. I’m not going to live a single day without you.”

A tear slid from the corner of my eye. I scrubbed it away. “I need you to understand that you’ll never have to settle for pieces of me. You shouldn’t be settling at all. You deserve so much better. You could have anyone—”

“That’s enough!”

I jumped at the lash of his voice.

“You will not ever say anything like that to me again,” he snapped. “Or I swear to God, angel, I will punish you.”

Shocked silence filled the space between us. The words I’d spoken circled restlessly in my mind, taunting me with how pathetic I could be. I never wanted to be dependent on him, but I already was.

“I have to go,” I said hoarsely.

“Don’t hang up. For God’s sake, Eva, we’re married. We’re in love. There’s no shame in that. So what if it’s crazy? It’s us. It’s who we are. You need to come to grips with that.”

The screen door squeaked as my dad stepped onto the porch. I looked at him and said, “My dad’s here, Gideon. I’ll have to talk to you later.”

“You make me happy,” he said, in the deep firm tone he used when making an unswayable decision. “I’d forgotten what that feels like. Don’t devalue what you mean to me.”

God.

“I love you, too.” I ended the call and set the phone down on the table with a shaky hand.

My dad settled into the other chair with his coffee. He wore long shorts and a dark olive T-shirt, but his feet were bare. He’d shaved and his hair was still damp, the ends curling slightly as they dried.

He was my father, but that didn’t stop me from appreciating the fact that he was ridiculously attractive. He kept himself in great shape and had a naturally confident bearing. I could see why my mother hadn’t been able to resist him when they’d met. And apparently still couldn’t.

“I heard you talking,” he said without looking at me.

“Oh.” My stomach dropped. It was bad enough spilling my guts to Gideon. Knowing that my dad had heard me do it only made it worse.

“I was going to talk to you about whether you knew what you were doing, getting engaged so soon and so young.”

I pulled my legs up and crossed them under me. “I figured you would.”

“But now I think I understand what you’re feeling.” He looked at me, his gray eyes soft and searching. “You express it far better than I ever could, back in the day. The most I could ever get out was ‘I love you,’ and it’s just not enough.”

I could see he was thinking about my mom. I knew it must be hard not to when I looked so much like her. “Gideon doesn’t think those words are enough, either.”