As we slide back into the SUV, the world narrows again to contained space and warmed air.
Ollie leans his head back against the seat and closes his eyes briefly.
“Worth it?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” I answer.
“For chicken tinga?”
“For normal.”
He turns his head toward me, studying my face like he’s trying to measure whether I mean that.
I lace our fingers together again. “Home,” I say.
He nods once. “Home.”
The word doesn’t feel temporary anymore, despite the location being exactly that. It doesn’t feel like something we have to protect from daylight.
The city rolls past outside the window, gray and melting and stubborn, buildings streaked with old snow and salt like they’re mid-transition and not quite convinced spring is coming. Vinny watches traffic with steady focus from the front seat, posture relaxed but alert.
In the back, Ollie’s thumb traces a slow line across my knuckles without thinking about it. It isn’t for show. It isn’t calculated. It’s muscle memory—affection without performance, intimacy without fear.
We bought groceries. We held hands in public. For most people, that’s nothing. Errands. Tuesday behavior.
For me, it’s something I’ve been starving for.
Twelve years ago, I married him in a chapel that smelled faintly of cheap flowers and carpet cleaner. I told myself that was enough. That love could live in private. That stolen nights and hotel rooms and careful scheduling were a compromise worth making.
But what I’ve craved—what I never stopped craving—was this.
Daylight.
Ordinary.
Unremarkable.
His hand in mine without a glance over his shoulder. His body angled toward mine in the back of a car where we’re not pretending. The right to argue about avocados and cilantro and whose turn it is to cook without worrying who’s watching.
I don’t just have pieces of him anymore. I don’t have the version carved out between games and headlines and fear. I have all of him. The captain. The stubborn bastard. The man whoblushes when I murmur something filthy in the produce aisle. The man who stood between me and a blade without hesitation. The man who saysuslike it’s permanent.
He shifts closer now, shoulder brushing mine as if he can’t help it.
I glance at him. He’s looking out the window, expression calm, unaware of the storm he’s quieted inside me.
For twelve years, I loved him in fragments. In stolen time. In the margins.
Now I get to love him in full.
And as the car turns onto his street—ourstreet—I realize something with a clarity that almost knocks the air from my lungs.
This is what I’ve been craving.
Not the spotlight. Not the grand gesture.
Just him.
In the open.
