Or later today if the mood takes me.
For now, though, coffee, sunlight, and desert.
That is enough.
Memphis appears at the sliding door, pressing his nose to the glass, tail moving slowly.
“There he is,” I say to nobody in particular, crossing to let him in.
He pads inside with the unhurried dignity of a dog who has been exactly where he’s meant to be and is only returning now because he has decided to. He sniffs my hand once, then moves to his water bowl and drinks deeply without any particular urgency.
“Where did you go?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer, which feels about right.
Tate reappears twenty minutes later, hair damp from the shower, wearing dark jeans and a black T-shirt, tattoos visible along his forearms where his sleeves are pushed back. He moves to the coffee machine without a word and refills his mug like the earlier incident never happened.
I look at him innocently over the rim of my mug.
He glances over.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
“Your hair looks nice, though,” I add.
He gives me a look.
“Clean,” I say.
He shakes his head and turns back to the window, but I catch the corner of his mouth moving before he does.
The kitchen settles back into that stillness it always has, warm and full of morning light.
There is something in the way he’d looked standing at that window before he noticed me, before the grin, and before all the rest of it that stays with me longer than I expect.
‘She knows me. The real me. Not the patch.’
I look down at my mug.
Not yet, I tell myself. Don’t start the morning there.
“You hungry?” Tate asks, turning from the counter.
Looking up at him, I smile. “Always.”
Chapter Eleven
TATE
She’s still at the island when I come back from my shower, both hands wrapped around her mug, completely unbothered, like she’s been here every morning of her life.
The pink dressing gown. The hair from sleep. The coffee going slowly warm between her palms.
Moving to the coffee machine, I refill my mug without a word, like the earlier incident never happened.
