“Glad you approve.”
“I do.” I pause. “Though if we’re being technical, that’s a statement, not a sentence crafted to showcase your full verbal range.”
He opens the door for me to step out onto the covered patio that wraps around one side of the reception hall. “You’re criticizing my grammar at a wedding.”
“I’m encouraging your growth.”
The patio overlooks a stretch of Hill Country glowing copper and violet in the fading light. Strings of little bulbs have already come on overhead, and clusters of people are at cocktail tables laughing and drinking and pretending it isn’t still slightly too warm for outdoor formalwear
Or faux furs.
One man is definitely still wearing faux furs.
He looks damp.
Miller guides me toward an open stretch of railing with that same hand at the small of my back he’s been using all evening, and I swear that touch alone is becoming its own language.
There are so many things I want to ask him.
Did you really dress up just because I said I would?
Did you know you looked devastating at my door?
Do you realize I nearly forgot my own name when I touched your chest?
Do you have any idea what holding my hand is doing to me?
Instead, I say, “I’m proud of you for embracing fantasy barbarian chic.”
He leans one forearm on the railing. “I’m thrilled to have made you proud.”
“You should be. Personal growth matters.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Yes. And bravery.” I look him up and down, purely for science. “And, arguably, public service.”
His mouth twitches.
There’s a beat where neither of us says anything.
Not awkward.
Just full.
A silence that feels almost like another person standing between us, watching and waiting.
I take a sip of my drink to give myself something to do with my hands and immediately remember that my other hand is still in his.
Still.
In.
His.
I look down at our joined hands as discreetly as possible, which is to say, not discreetly at all.
He follows my gaze.
