“I’m aware. I’m looking forward to it.”
Cruz comes back out with two mugs and raises an eyebrow at whatever my face is doing. I mouthmy daughterand he mouthswhich oneand I mouththe loud oneand he grins and sits down beside me and puts his hand over mine on the armrest, unhurried, easy, like it belongs there.
Because it does.
“Tell me everything,” Mia demands in my ear.
So I do.
Not all of it, not yet. But the shape of it. The grill fire and a fire extinguisher and a man who looked at me like I was art and had the audacity to mean it.
Mia cries a little. She gets that from me too.
Later, after Maya’s call, which goes the way it needs to go, messy and loving and full of Cruz sayingI know, I know, I should have told you, I’m fine, I promise I’m finewhile Maya cries and I sit beside him with my hand on his back and do not say a word because this is his to do. And finally we’re back on the deck in the dark.
His head is tipped back. Mine too. The stars are doing their ancient indifferent beautiful thing.
“She wants to meet you,” he says.
“I gathered.”
“She said, and I’m quoting directly, that anyone who googles a man’s cardiac surgeon within twenty minutes of finding out about his heart condition is the only kind of person she’d trust with her brother.”
“She sounds extremely intelligent.”
“She’s the best person I know.” A pause. “She’s going to have competition for that now.”
I don’t say anything. I let it exist the way he taught me. Without counterargument, without case-building, without reaching for the rational objection to something that is simply and completely true.
He takes my hand.
“Thank you,” he says, quietly.
“For what specifically.”
“All of it. The extinguisher. The wine you accepted. The morning coffee. The not running.” His thumb moves across my knuckles. “For sitting next to me when I called Maya.”
“Cruz.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to be in Denver in three weeks.”
He goes still for a half second. “Yeah?”
“The Friday after your procedure, assuming your surgeon’s outcomes data continues to perform as advertised.” I look at the stars. “I’ll need somewhere to stay.”
“I have a guest room,” he says, with elaborate casualness.
“I won’t be using it.”
He brings my hand up and presses his mouth to my knuckles, warm and certain, and I feel it everywhere.
“She only wanted a month of solitude,” he says quietly, to the stars, to himself, to no one in particular.
“She got four days,” I say, dry as the Outer Banks sand.
“Best four days of my life.”
