Page 44 of Soft Serve

I'll spend time with the ethics of that thought later.

Right now I'm here.

"Eleanor called back," I say.

Her hand stills slightly under mine, then relaxes.

"When?" she asks.

"After I called her this morning," I say. "I told her I wouldn't be on a plane by Friday or any other day on her timeline."

Paloma is quiet.

"She said the board would move forward without me," I continue. "I told her that was their prerogative and that I'd be in touch when I was ready to discuss terms."

"Terms," she says.

"For what comes after," I say. "Whatever that looks like."

She lifts her head and looks at me, chin resting on my chest, her eyes doing what they always do, reading me thoroughly and without pretense.

"You're not going back," she says.

"Not on their terms," I say. "Not to be the person they built the position for." I hold her gaze. "That person signed off on the Calloway acquisition without reading what it would cost a family. I'm not interested in being him again."

She looks at me for a long moment.

"That's a significant thing to walk away from," she says.

"Yes," I agree.

"And you're sure," she says, and the word carries the weight of last night, of her telling him to go be sure, of everything she was protecting herself from by asking.

"I'm sure," I say. "Not because I'm in your bed, though I want to be clear that I am very glad to be in your bed."

She makes a sound that is almost a laugh.

"I'm sure because I called Eleanor at seven this morning before I came here," I say. "When it was just me and a kitchen that didn't know my name and nothing in it I've chosen. That's when I was sure."

She holds my gaze for a moment longer.

Then she lays her head back down on my chest, and I feel her exhale slowly, the full length of her settling against me with the quality of someone who has decided to stop bracing.

"Okay," she says quietly.

Just that.

But in Paloma's language, which I've been learning with the attention it deserves, okay is not a small word. It's the whole thing.

"What happens now?" she asks after a while.

"I don't entirely know," I say honestly.

"And Hearts Bend," she says.

I look at the ceiling, at the morning light moving across it, at the room of a woman who came back for someone she loved and stayed for something she became.

"Hearts Bend is where I am," I say. "For as long as you'll have me in it."