“I don’t know if love is enough.”
“It isn’t.”
That answer surprised me.
“Trust matters more.”
He stood.
“And I know I don’t have yours yet.”
He walked toward the door.
I watched him.
“Ryan.”
He turned.
“Dinner.”
“What?”
“You can take me to dinner Friday.”
For several seconds, the most feared mafia boss in Chicago simply stared.
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s dinner.”
“Right.”
“Seven o’clock.”
“I’ll be here at six forty-five.”
“Seven.”
“Six fifty-five.”
“Ryan.”
“Seven.”
He left smiling.
I closed the door.
And for the first time since 30,000 feet, I touched my wedding ring without wanting to remove it.
Six months passed.
Ryan went to therapy.
He hated it.
Then he started going alone.
That surprised me more.
He reorganized his legitimate companies to reduce the dependence on old family structures.
He gave me unrestricted access to the holdings tied to my shares.
He stopped telling me I was safer not knowing.
Sometimes the truth frightened me.
But fear with information was different from fear in darkness.
We dated.
My husband and I dated.
Coffee.
Dinner.
Walks along the lake.
Once, a terrible movie where Ryan spent two hours complaining that the fictional mafia boss had unrealistic security.
I laughed until I cried.
He kissed me afterward.
The kiss was slow.
Careful.
He stopped first.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
That one word felt more intimate than anything we had done in a year.
Eventually, I moved home.
Not because Ryan asked.
Because I wanted to.
We still had work to do.
But for the first time, we were doing it together.
Then, on the anniversary of the flight,
Ryan handed me an envelope.
Inside were two tickets.
Chicago to Denver.
I stared at him.
“You cannot be serious.”
“I thought we should replace the memory.”
“With the exact flight?”
“Different airline.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“Economy.”
I looked up.
“Ryan Moretti flying economy?”
“I’m making sacrifices.”
I laughed.
Then saw the second page.
Denver to Portland.
“You never made it to Portland.”
“No.”
“So?”
He smiled.
“I thought this time I might actually take my wife.”
My chest tightened.
“Your wife?”
He nodded.
“If she’s willing.”
I looked at him.
At the man who had once allowed another woman to be mistaken for me.
At the man who had lied.
Failed.
Lost me.
And then, instead of demanding forgiveness, spent a year earning the possibility of it.
I took the tickets.
“I’ll think about it.”
Ryan smiled.
“That’s more than I deserve.”
He was right.
Chap 5
Economy boarding passes in hand.
Ryan looked personally offended by them.
“You’re staring at that ticket like it insulted your mother.”
“It says Group Six.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never been Group Six.”
“Character development.”
He looked at me.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely.”
His tattoos showed beneath the sleeves of a dark charcoal sweater.
No suit.
No entourage standing visibly nearby.
Though I knew Dominic and two security officers were somewhere in the airport.
Some habits died harder than others.
A blonde woman walked past.
Ryan immediately looked at the floor.
I burst out laughing.
“What?”
“That is the least subtle thing I have ever seen.”
“I’m being respectful.”
“You look terrified of blonde women.”
“I have learned from experience.”
I leaned against him.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Ryan said, “We don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, we do.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“We don’t have to prove anything.”
“I know.”
“If you want to go home, we go home.”
That was the difference.
A year earlier, Ryan would have decided.
Now he asked.
I took his hand.
“Let’s go to Denver.”
The flight was uneventful.
That felt miraculous.
No secretaries.
No threatening photographs.
No mysterious enemies.
No lies about Portland.
Halfway through, a flight attendant stopped beside us.
“Mr. Moretti?”
Ryan looked up.
“Yes?”
She smiled.
“I’m sorry to bother you. My husband works for one of your hotels. He says your company’s new family leave program helped us when our daughter was born.”
Ryan glanced at me.
The program had been my proposal.
“That was my wife’s initiative.”
The flight attendant looked at me.
“Oh! Mrs. Moretti?”
Ryan smiled.
Not the careless smile from a year earlier.
A different one.
Proud.
“Yes.”
He squeezed my hand.
“My wife.”
Two ordinary words.
They nearly made me cry.
The flight attendant moved on.
Ryan looked at me.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
I wiped my eye.
“You’re ruining my makeup.”
“I didn’t touch you.”
“Your fault anyway.”
He smiled.
Then he lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles.
No performance.
No watcher.
No strategy.
Just us.
Denver looked different without betrayal attached to it.
We spent two days there.
Then flew to Portland.
Ryan had rented a small house overlooking the coast.
Not a hotel.
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