“This is amazing!” I said. “You’ve been busy in the past few months.”
Adam smiled. “The past three weeks, actually. My decorator organized a rush job.”
I raised my brows. “Expecting some important guests?”
“Yep,” he said, watching me closely. “You.”
My heart stuttered a little bit but I wasn’t quite sure whether it was from pleasure or disappointment. He’d done all this—a huge undertaking in a short amount of time, a major modification to part of his home—for me. But it was for me to live in… to stay in. To sleep in. Alone. While he slept down the hall.
I turned away from him so he wouldn’t see the mixed emotions on my face, walked out of the bathroom and back into the beautiful bedroom. I stared out the huge windows at the view that looked out on part of the Back Bay of Newport Harbor. Sailboats were motoring in after a long day of leisure on the ocean. Small electric boats full of tourists and locals alike were tootling along the calm water while maneuvering around the bigger motorboats.
“The best part about this room is the windows,” Adam said, coming up behind me.
“They are nice windows,” I said quietly.
He picked up what looked like a remote control from the marble-topped nightstand. “But they are not always windows. Sometimes they are a wall.” He pressed a button and suddenly the windows went opaque and turned a flat eggshell color, as if part of the wall. We stood in semi-darkness, the only light coming from the bathroom skylight behind us.
“What the hell just happened?” I said, confused.
“No blackout curtains necessary. Just hit this button at night and the room stays dark until you hit another button in the morning. Or you can even put it on a timer so they go transparent again at a certain time of day. Or if you only want to let a little light in…” He pressed another button and the window was back, only with a frosted, muted effect.
“Can I project movies and video calls on it like Tony Stark’s windows?”
He grinned. “Not quite yet. When they invent an Iron Man window, that’s going into my room first.”
There it was again, that twinge in my chest when he said my room. There was my room and there was his room. There was no “our” room. Did that mean there wasn’t an “us”? I turned away from him again.
“They’re more than windows and wall, though—they are also lighting.” He hit another button and the windows went opaque again but glowed with a golden light that mimicked indirect lighting. He pressed another button and a bunch of tiny white lights appeared along the seam of the walls where they met the ceiling.
I wandered over to the low bookcase that stretched the length of the wall perpendicular to the window and its seat. On top, there were a series of framed pictures. One of my horse, Snowball, who was still up at the ranch in Anza. One of me and Heath on a visit to Palm Springs when we were in tenth grade. One of my Mom riding her favorite mare, Rusty. One of Heath’s gorgeous desert sunset shots taken at the Anza-Borrego State Park. And one of Adam and me standing next to Diamond Falls—that spectacular cataract in St. Lucia—the morning after the night we’d first made love. My chest tightened to look at us then, so happy, so in love even though neither of us would admit it to the other—or even ourselves—at that point. I picked up the picture, instantly fascinated that these two people were the same ones standing in this room, getting along swimmingly even though we felt miles apart from one another.
“So what do you think?”
I swallowed and set the picture down. I wouldn’t dare let him know about my disappointment. He’d done a magnificent, wonderful thing. Made a very kind gesture. I plastered on a smile and turned back to him.
“I can’t believe you did all this. You didn’t even know if I was going to come back.”
He set down the remote and shrugged. “Well, I hoped for it. And I wanted to make sure you’d be comfortable. So I had it done. Just in case.”
Just in case. He’d spent thousands and thousands of dollars on a rush remodel “just in case.”
He moved up to me, peered into my eyes. I was still faking that rapturous smile. He put a hand on my cheek and my eyes fluttered closed. Every touch from him was like magic, like a thousand words, feelings and gestures wrapped up into one split second. His fingertips grazed my cheek. “Like I said, I want to take care of you.”
He did. He did want to take care of me—from fifty feet away, down the length of a long hallway and separated by two doors.