Page 186 of Suite 7

I reach down and touch his face.

He turns his lips into my palm. That part is just Kane.

We stay like that.

Him kneeling. Me standing. The collar at my throat. His mouth warm against my hand.

Then he stands and wraps me in his arms, and we find our way to each other in the candlelight in the way that belongs only to us.

Afterward, we lie in the warm dark. His arm around me. My hand finding the collar in the quiet, tracing its edge like I’m learning something by touch I already know by heart.

His hand covers mine.

“Mine,” he says, into my hair.

“Yours.” I turn my face into his chest. “Obviously and completely yours.”

We get dressed. I turn to straighten his lapels after he zips my dress. He smooths the fabric without being asked. Six months of mornings and late nights distilled into two small gestures, the kind that don’t need a name because they already have one.

At the mirror, I pause.

The woman looking back has the collar at her throat and her makeup slightly wrecked and her eyes bright, and she looks — I have to find the word for it.

She looks like herself. Finally, completely, herself.

Dominic is at the bar when we walk through the lobby. He looks up. His eyes go immediately to my throat.

“Congratulations,” he says. Then, looking between us, quietly: “Take care of each other.”

“We will,” Kane says. And the way he says it — simple, certain, no performance in it — makes my chest ache in the best possible way.

As we step out into the April night, his hand finds mine before I’ve finished the thought of reaching for it.

The moment we’re inside the apartment I kick off my heels. He doesn’t say a word, just smiles.

“I want your shirt,” I say.

“Take whatever you want.”

I pause on my way to the bedroom, because Gerald catches my eye first.

He sits on his shelf above the bar cart, exactly where he’s always sat. Except someone has tied a tiny gold ribbon around his pot. The kind that comes on gift bags. Neat bow. Precise.

I stare at it.

“Kane.”

“Mm.” From the kitchen.

“Did you put a bow on Gerald?”

A beat of silence.

“It’s a special occasion.”

“You gave a cactus a bow.”

“He’s part of the family.”