Page 73 of The Wrong Track

“We’re not really getting fancy, though, right?”

“Turn left at the next light,” he directed. “I’m going to wear a suit and a tie. It’s not every day that I get married, and I’m only going to do it once.”

Just the once. Christ! Instead of letting myself freak out about that, I focused on what was I going to wear. I looked down at my sweater, which actually felt a little warm for the day.

“You’ll look beautiful no matter what you have on,” Tobin said. “So will you, peanut. Make a right. We’re here.”

This restaurant was a step up from the last one, in that the menu wasn’t painted on the wall, but it was still casual enough that I didn’t worry about Ella making a ruckus or about prices, either. We ordered from a server, not into a microphone at a register.

“Now that I’ve told my mom, the news will be out to the rest of the family.” He adjusted Ella on his lap and let her play with his fingers. “I’m sure they’re going to want to throw a party. Aunt Evelyn will, definitely, and Haze is going to want to get in on the planning action. What do you think about that?”

“I guess it could be fun.”

“It will be good for you to get to know everyone better, too. What about your family?”

“It’s just my mom and my sister. We never had anyone else.” I drank from my water glass. “I don’t think they would be very interested.”

“When was the last time you spoke?”

“Why, Remy? Why are you leaving?” I heard my sister ask me. That wasn’t the last time I’d heard it, though.

“After I’d been gone for about a year, I called Lily. I didn’t get to look her up and read about her then.” I’d had the idea that I would be able to tell from her voice how she was, that I’d know she was ok. “She didn’t want to talk to me. She asked how the hell I dared to call her after what I’d put them through and then she said she hated me and hung up. I haven’t spoken to her since and that’s why I’m always trying to read about her.”

“What had you put them through?”

“I mean, I left them. I ran away and they had no idea where I was. At the time, I thought that I was helping, that it was the best thing for everyone. But it must have been awful for them not to know. What if we didn’t know where Ella was?” He shook his head, his lips turning down. “Exactly. It wasn’t like my mom and I had a close relationship but she cared enough, and Lily definitely did. But it would have been worse if I’d stayed. She doesn’t know it, but she should be glad.”

“I don’t understand,” Tobin said. “Was it because of Kilian? I thought you met him when you were already on your own.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know him then, not yet. But things had happened…can we talk about this later?” Or never?

“Sure. Let’s talk later.” And he passed over the baby so I could hug her, which I needed. “Mrs. Schumer thinks this peanut is the smartest baby she’s ever met,” he commented, which went without saying. She was Lily all over again.

I had hoped, without really believing, that Tobin would forget that we were going to return to the topic from dinner. After we put Ella down and watched baseball, which had picked up when hockey ended, he took my hand.

“Let’s go to bed,” he told me, and without argument I followed him into his bedroom. He fluffed my pillow, then his own, then the one that went in the middle, between us. I watched and when he was done with his prep-work, I got in. It felt so nice to be back in my spot; the night that I’d agreed that we should get married, Tobin had led me here, and I’d been very glad.

He flicked off the light and adjusted the baby monitor. “She’s sleeping so much better.”

“Praise the holies.” I meant that very sincerely.

“You have been, too. I think so, unless I’m crashing so hard that I’m not hearing you.” He reached over the pillow and found my hand.

No, I was sure that he would have heard. I wove our fingers together and tucked them under my chin. “I have been sleeping, even when I’m not with you.”

“But it’s better for you to be with me,” he said.

“Because you can monitor me like we do for the baby?”

“Because I like to have you close,” Tobin answered. “I like it. Not to monitor, just because.”

Oh. I wasn’t totally sure what he meant by that, but I understood the feeling. “I like it, too,” I admitted, because my favorite thing in the world was to be with him, to be with him and the baby. When I wasn’t, like when I was at work, I thought about them and wished we were together.

“My mom was talking to me today about my journey of maturity. Apparently, we’re all on our own boats in life,” he said, and then laughed softly. “That’s with capital letters, your Boat of Life. It’s a complicated theory that she’s been working on for a while. There’s a lot about slip fees and sandbars.”

“Are you going to explain it to me now? Because it’s kind of late,” I pointed out, and he laughed again.

“Hell no, I’m not going to tell you about the Boat of Life. But she did make me think about things. Like how I believed that I was in love with Lulu, which was apparently a navigational error. It was a mistake—not to be with her, I don’t mean that. She’s a fun girl. We were…busy together.”