“Okay?” She blinks.
“Yeah.” I take one step. Then another. Right into the space that has cost us both something for months. “I’ve been waiting for that sentence for two years, Antonia.” I look at her directly. No grin. No performance. Just the truth of it, plain and stated. “I can wait a little longer if you need it.” She shakes her head.
“Then tell me what you want,” I say. “The real version.”
A pause. One breath. “You,” she says. “Publicly. No caveats.” I close the distance. My hands go to her face, thumbs along her jaw, tilting her up the way I’ve done before and never taken for granted. Her hands grip the front of my shirt. The city hums outside the glass.
“Deal,” I say. Against her mouth. Meaning it.
She kisses me. Deliberate. Unhurried. Not burning something off or escaping. This one knows exactly where it's going and plans to get there properly. I hold her like I have time.
Because I do.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Toni Amato
Three months later, Piper Maddox’s kitchen is chaos, which is how I know it’s Sunday. Max is on the floor with Christopher, who has decided that the correct activity for after dinner is demanding that Max demonstrate every hockey move in slow motion, including a full stop, in socked feet, on hardwood, which is how you get the particular sound of a six-foot-two NHL enforcer sliding sideways into a kitchen cabinet at low speed and announcing that’s called an edge, bud, very important with complete dignity.
“Again!” Christopher demands.
“I’m going to need more floor,” Max says.
Chase appears in the doorway holding Luke. “My floor.”
“Your floor is very good floor.”
“Thank you. I maintainit.”
“I believe you.”
I am at the kitchen table with Elena, who arrived this afternoon with wine and absolutely no intention of leaving until she has assessed every dimension of the situation. She has been watching Max with Christopher for seven minutes with an expression I recognize from the night she told me I was completely gone.
“Okay,” she says, not looking at me. “I see it.”
“You see what.”
“Why you’re not cautious about him.”
Max catches Christopher mid-launch. The boy has decided that edge drills mean running at full speed and being caught. Max spins him once, sets him down, and ruffles his hair.
Christopher holds up his hand. The rubber bracelet is on his little wrist. His.
Max has a new blue one superstar printed on it. Won at the same Chuck E. Cheese six weeks ago because Christopher wanted to match.
“It’s basic etiquette,” Max had told me when I found it on his nightstand. “You don’t refuse a gift from a three-year-old.”
“You already have one,” I’d said.
“He wanted to match.” A shrug. Completely serious. “Basic etiquette.”
I reach across the table and fill Elena’s glass. “Don’t say it.”
“Gone,” she says. “Completely gone.” She raises her glass toward Max and Christopher on the floor. “Welcome.”
Outside,the city goes on. Inside, it’s garlic and chaos and Chase demonstrating that retired goalies can, in fact, do an edge stop in the kitchen if sufficiently motivated, and Piper appearing from the hallway with the specific expression of a woman who knew how this was going to end before any of us did.
She catches my eye across the room.
