“If you still want—”
“If I still…what the hell does that mean? I love you. Of course I’ll want you, want to do this with you.”
“We’ll see.” She bites her lip, swallows. “But I think at least until the baby is born, we go our separate ways.”
“No.” My denial is a glass hurled into the wall, shattering. “You think you’re jealous, possessive. The thought of you meeting someone out on the trail, fucking someone, falling for another man, someone less complicated, easier, with l
ess baggage… I can’t live with that. I can’t go back.”
“Maybe we don’t go back and we don’t move forward.” Her laugh is hollow. “Daddy used to say sometimes the most powerful move you can make is to be still. I’ve learned that in the last few weeks.”
“How so?”
“Running from my family name, from expectations, running from my grief over Daddy. All this time I thought my candidates were running, but maybe I was the one running all along. Maybe we just…hold.”
“What does that mean? Are you saying we’ll be together?”
“For now,” she says, looking at me with tears in her eyes. “No. I can’t.”
“And will you be with someone else?” I’m holding my breath, holding my heart out to her, offering her the chance to break it.
“No,” she laughs and swipes at the tears on her cheeks. “I don’t want anyone else. Only you.”
I want to be your last.
“I think we…hold and see what happens,” she says. “Just hold while I elect Georgia’s first Hispanic governor and you support Aiko the way she needs and be there for Noah the way he needs. And we haven’t even discussed how your book will change everything. Once it’s published, you’ll be in demand in a way you’ve never been before. Mark my words, it will change your life.”
“And once the governor is elected and the baby is born and I’ve taken the book world by storm?”
She smiles. Not a wide smile that makes any promises, but one that says what she intends. “Then we’ll see.”
I hate this plan, but at least she’s not giving up on me, and most women would. I reach for her, and this time she doesn’t pull away. She huddles into my chest, wrapping her arm around my waist. I cup her face, splaying my hand over her jaw and lowering my head for a kiss. Between our lips, I taste tears, hers and mine. I taste our dreams, our hopes, our fears. We kiss until we’re both breathless and gasping. She grips my shirt for dear life, like she might fall if she lets go. I swallow more pain at the thought of being separated from her again even if it ultimately proves to be temporary.
“I love you, Tru.”
In synagogue, we’d whisper the Baruch Shem because it’s part of a prayer reserved for angels considered pure, a blessing we’re not worthy to offer to God. That’s how I tell Kimba I love her because I don’t deserve her—don’t have any right to ask her to wade into this morass of my life, but I’m begging her to.
“I love you, too,” she whispers back, tears running unchecked down her face and her voice hiccupping on a broken breath. “I don’t know what will happen, but I know you are the love of my life, Ezra Stern, and I’ll never feel this way again.”
“Promise?” I ask, brushing my thumb across her lips.
Her smile is sad, but I’ll settle for it for now, like all the other things I have to settle for…for now. “I’ll do better than a promise.”
She hooks our pinky fingers together. “Pact.”
I chuckle through the lump in my throat. “Pact.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Kimba
We lost.
I read the text message a second time. A third, letting the words toll in my head like a church bell.
Felita: Should I call? You want the details of the vote?
I glance around the depressing hotel room with the dated décor in the Alabama town where I’m sleeping tonight. I have a meeting with a local voting rights organization tomorrow morning. How am I supposed to inspire, encourage them when the very legislation that could destroy their efforts just passed?