Page 95 of Suite 7

“Dinner.”

“A restaurant. A table. A meal.” A slight quirk at the corner of his mouth. “The conventional sequence of events.”

I look at him. “Is that part of our arrangement?”

He picks up his coffee cup. Then sets it down again without drinking from it.

“No,” he says. “It’s not.”

“So what is it?”

I watch him decide how honest to be. Then choose it.

“I want to know if we work like this.” He gestures, brief and slightly awkward, at the space between us, the two of us on a Monday night with no scene negotiated and no reason to be here except that he drove across town in the rain because he wanted to. “Outside Eclipse. Outside the dynamic. Just—” He stops.

I wait.

He doesn’t finish the sentence.

I stare at him. Kane Sinclair, who is always certain of everything, who has never in nine years of fighting with me searched for a word, is sitting on my couch, unable to finish a sentence, with color in his face.

“You want to take me on a date,” I say.

The color deepens.

“I want to take you to dinner,” he says, with great dignity.

“Kane.”

“It’s dinner,” he says in the tone he uses when he’s decided something is not up for debate.

“It’s a date.”

“It’s a meal. At a restaurant. With food.” He picks up his coffee. Sets it down.

I tilt my head. “That’s a date.”

“It’s dinner.” He clears his throat. “At a nice place.”

“Kane.”

“Vera.”

“You want to take me on a date.”

He looks at me for a long moment, jaw tight, clearly weighing his options, and I watch the exact moment he accepts that he is not going to win this one.

“Yes. Fine. I do. Is that a problem?”

And here’s where I should say: yes, actually. Because a date is not an arrangement. A date is the thing we said this wasn’t.

But I can hear Sloane in the back of my head — you seem different lately — and I know what the date means even if I’m not ready to say it, and I know what it costs even if I’m not ready to pay it, and I say:

“It’s just—“ I tilt my head. “We agreed to an arrangement. And now you’re asking me on a date. Those are different things.”

“I’m aware.” His voice is dry. “I’m asking anyway.”

I look at him for a long moment, the rain against the windows, the warmth of the cup in my hands, the weight of it all sitting between us.