Chapter 20: Both of You

Juliet's POV

Declan took the invitation to his drafting table in the barn and sat looking at it for an hour.

I let him. He needed to work out what he'd do with it, and I wanted to see what Roz did with the quiet.

She did nothing. She made soup. She cut the bread too thin and stirred a pot that didn't need stirring.

Then, at four, with the sun gone and the lake turning blue, she put the spoon down.

"Who's second?" she said.

I looked up from the table. "What?"

"You told his mother Declan isn't second. I heard you from the stairs." Her voice was very even. "So who is?"

"Roz."

"I'm asking. He gets a speech in the bath and a roof in July. What do I get?"

"Don't do this."

"What do I get, Jules? A dorm room?" Her eyes were hard and wet. "Nineteen years old, you were drunk, and I was a story you told in a drawer."

"That is not fair."

"It's the truest thing I've said all week." She came around the table. "He's the one you chose. I'm the one you wanted. They're not the same."

"That isn't how it is."

"Then say how. If it came down to him or me. If the world made you choose, tonight, which?"

I stood up. We were very close.

"I'm not answering that," I said.

"Of course you're not."

"Because it's a trap, and you built it, and you know you did. You've been waiting fourteen months to be told you're the one who loses."

Her face crumpled for a second. Then it set.

"Say it," she said. "Say the true thing."

"I'd have married you if you'd asked me."

She went white.

"I'd have married you at twenty-two, in a church basement, in a dress from a thrift shop. I'd have married you in the dorm room, with the door open."

My voice cracked.

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