Page 35 of Honeyfires

"Better than I have in years," I said, which surprised me by being true.

"Me too." Her bright eyes sought mine and held my gaze. "I was worried you'd be gone."

"I thought about it," I admitted. "Old habit."

"But you stayed."

"Couldn't bring myself to leave."

She tipped her face up, and I kissed her, slowly, tasting coffee and sleep and that indefinable Vera-ness I was apparently going to spend a significant amount of time thinking about from now on.

"I could get used to this," she murmured.

"The coffee or the staying?"

"Yes."

I laughed, and she smiled against my jaw at the sound of it.

"Scrambled eggs?" she asked.

"Are they as good as the coffee?"

She lifted her head, affronted. "The eggs are famous."

"Famous where, specifically?"

"In my kitchen."

"That's a limited sample size."

"Then you should eat them and expand the data set." She climbed out of bed, belting her robe, and held out her hand. "Come on."

I took her hand, pulled on my shirt, and followed her into a sunlit kitchen where she moved with natural authority, cracking eggs, chopping herbs, stealing commentary over her shoulder while I sat on the counter and watched her and thought: this.

This was what I hadn't known I was looking for. Not the action or the adrenaline or the grand gesture. Just a Saturday morning kitchen and someone moving through it who wanted me there.

"You're staring again," she said without turning.

"I'm observing," I said. "Library science."

She pointed the spatula at me over her shoulder. "That's my thing."

"I'm borrowing it."

She turned back to the eggs. I could see, from behind, that she was smiling. The eggs were excellent, which she received as her absolute due.

When I finally had to leave for my noon shift, she walked me to the door in her robe, coffee mug in hand, hair loose.

"Tonight?" she asked.

"Miss me already?"

"I've missed you for twenty-nine years," she said. "I just didn't know what I was missing." She rose on her toes and kissed me. "So. Tonight?"

"Tonight," I said.

I rode to work with the desert morning air cold and clean against my face and the long road ahead wide and clear. Somewhere around mile three, the thought arrived fully formed and settled quietly, without fanfare, the way true things usually do.