Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136743 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Maybe one day I’ll want to marry again. Or Judah and I may live together once the girls strike out on their own. I don’t know the shape our relationship will take through every stage as the years go by, but I do know we’ll be together. That commitment is so solid I feel it every time Judah holds my hand, a promise pressed between our palms like an oath our souls make. A vow our hearts confess.
“I love you, Judah Cross,” I tell him, cupping his jaw and kissing that stern mouth until it gentles as it always does for me.
“I love you, Soledad Charles.” He squeezes me, his eyes brimming with respect and adoration. “I’m so damn proud of you, sweetheart.”
I know a goofy grin blooms on my face. This is what Hendrix calls my “resting joy face,” and she says it’s how I look when I talk about Judah. I can’t help it. As hard as I try, I’m not the cool mom. I’m not the cool anything. I’m the girl who has always loved too hard and offered too much, sometimes to those who didn’t deserve it. I always felt so distant from this feeling that burns between Judah and me. Like I watched it from afar in others. It was evident between Yasmen and Josiah even when they were divorced. Mami and Dad had their own version of it. It always crackled beneath the surface of Mami and Bray’s every interaction until they could no longer ignore it and had to run back for this feeling. The sense that after being on your own—sometimes lonely and sometimes contentedly alone—you look down to find a dangling thread in your hands. One end of infinity, and across years and circumstances, he stands there holding the other. The ends of forever reunited and tied together.
It has been a long road to finding this feeling because I had to find myself first. Had to know and honor myself first. I now realize you can risk loving completely when you completely love yourself. Even if your heart is broken, it doesn’t mean you will break. I’ve never been more sure of Judah and of me. This moment, this lifetime with him, no matter what shape it takes, is all I could have hoped for. It’s what I prayed for but wasn’t sure could be. I wasn’t sure we could be. I suffered a betrayal so devastating it could have hardened me, could have taught me to withhold my heart. Instead, I have learned to save my heart for one worthy of it.
We exchange kisses and breaths and heartbeats, completely content in each other’s arms and under a sun that belongs to only us.
Your skin is summer night and your kiss is all I want.
It’s a silent whisper in my head as I hold him. He’s a miracle in my arms, and I tremble with wonder and awe. I don’t say the words aloud, but leave them a conversation with my heart—the sentiment an heirloom Mami passed down to me, like so many other secrets pressed between pages. That she was indeed a hornet, not a butterfly. That the plain of her heart stretched vast enough to love two men so completely, love her children so purely, love her mother and her friends and the world around her with such quiet fervor… because first she loved herself.
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READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. When the book opens, Judah and Tremaine are meeting with a social worker to determine living arrangements for their boys as part of the “collaborative divorce.” What were your initial impressions of them as a couple? As parents?
2. Soledad’s marriage is obviously in trouble. She knows something is amiss and has suspicions, but can never “catch” Edward. Have you ever found yourself in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, when you knew something was off but had no proof? If so, how did you handle it?
3. The attraction between Soledad and Judah at the Christmas party is instant. What were your thoughts about Soledad as a married woman, albeit in a troubled marriage, feeling that pull to another man?
4. At one point, Hendrix mentions being surprised someone as driven as Soledad never wanted a career. Soledad pushes back a little, saying she never wanted to work outside her home, and articulates the vocational validity of being a homemaker. How does that viewpoint challenge cultural ideas about women and ambition?
5. Once everything is revealed about Edward’s embezzlement scheme, Soledad has to figure out a new path for herself and her girls, including how she’ll leverage her skills to earn a living. Have you ever had to make a major life pivot? If so, how did you handle having to call on new skills or chart new territory?