Chapter 24: The Last Item

He held the phone out to me over the baby.

The note was open to the bottom, past the lines I knew.

Only one line sat on the screen.

"Read it," Maddox said.

I shifted Dani into the crook of one arm.

The line was short.

The date beside it was the second week of September, more than a year before I had ever said a word to him.

7. Wake up next to her for the rest of my life.

I read it, and read it again.

The words did not change.

"That's the last one?"

"I wrote it the week I decided I was never going to talk to you."

"Maddox."

"I thought it was the only thing on there I'd never be allowed to do. I put it at the bottom so I'd stop looking at it."

I looked down at the list, the apron and the clip and my name and the counter.

All the filthy things he had been so afraid of sat above it.

At the very end, in plain letters, was the one he wanted most.

"That's the filthiest thing on this entire list," I said.

He laughed so hard that Dani frowned in her sleep.

"I'm serious. Items one through six, I can handle. This one will take me forty years."

"Fifty."

"I'll push for fifty."

Teddy came through the door at that moment, carrying a gift bag nearly as big as himself.

"Ma'am. Captain." He took in the baby, the blanket, and Helen in the corner with her eyes shut.

"She's so little," he said. "Is she supposed to be that little?"

"She's supposed to be exactly that little."

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