Page 221 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

She gave me a look.

“I’m attempting normal,” I amended.

“Better.”

Candlelight moved over Quinn’s face, catching the new locket and the small green stone at its clasp. The sight produced a feeling I did not know how to categorize without becoming sentimental in public.

My family’s necklace had brought Quinn into my life because I needed something back.

This necklace was different.

It didn’t ask anything of her. It didn’t pull her into my history or make her part of a debt she had never owed. It honored what had already been hers before I knew her: her courage, her strange and brilliant eye for beauty and value, and the dog she loved with a devotion I understood more every day.

“Do you want to dance again before we leave?” I asked.

Her eyes brightened with delight. “I thought you’d never ask.”

The color in her cheeks deepened.

I stood and offered my hand. She took it with a smile that made the rest of the restaurant less important.

We danced through one song, then half of another because Quinn declared the second “too good to abandon.” She rested one hand against my shoulder, the other held in mine, her body close enough that every breath felt slightly less innocent than it should have. I had kissed her in ruins. Held her in my bed. Told her I loved her before I had fully understood how saying it would make my life feel both less stable and more like mine.

This, somehow, unsettled me more.

A woman I loved in my arms while music played and no danger pressed at the door.

It was all so ordinary.

I had spent so long believing ordinary was for people who had fewer obligations. Fewer histories. Fewer ways to be divided by blood and duty and other people’s expectations. But Quinn moved with me, and ordinary began to feel less like a smaller life than a fuller one.

When the song ended, she stayed in my arms.

“Rafe?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to say something honest and possibly damaging to my image.”

“I’ll prepare myself.”

“This is a very good first date.”

I looked down at her. “Possibly damaging?”

“I have a reputation for mystery.”

“You do?”

“In my mind, yes.”

“That must be difficult to maintain.”

“Very.”

I bent and kissed her because there were only so many things a man could survive without response.

She smiled against my mouth.