My stomach tightened.
“How many surprises did he think I could take in one morning?”
Wade’s eyes shone. “He was hoping you could take all of them.”
“Convenient.”
“Meryl—”
“No. Do not make his hope beautiful.”
Wade stopped.
I unfolded the final page.
The handwriting was worse here. Smaller. Several words had been crossed out. Randall almost never crossed words out in letters; he preferred starting over.
There were no clean copies now.
Meryl, I know what you are thinking.
I whispered, “No, you don’t.”
You are thinking that I should have trusted you.
My throat closed.
You are right.
I sat very still.
You are thinking that love does not give one person permission to decide what another person can survive.
My thumb moved over the edge of the page.
You are right about that too.
I stared at the words.
Randall had always been impossible to argue with when he surrendered the strongest point first.
