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“With women, I’ve kind of been a flake,” he said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“But that’s because I’ve sort of always been in love with you,” he said.

“Seriously?” I said, grinning. “You’re going to blame that on me?”

“All your fault, Leona Shore,” he said. “It’s always been you. I’ve always already been committed to you. So, there’s no problem now. I’m all in.”

“Always been committed to me, which is why you were sleeping with my best friend.”

“As I just explained, that was about you.”

I let out a long, deep laugh. “That is some shit and you know it.”

“Well,” he said, “she’s dead.”

I stopped laughing. “She is.” I swallowed, shutting my eyes, feeling the warmth of his skin on mine. “Taken too soon, really. I never got to forgive her.”

“Would you have forgiven her?”

I let out a breath. “Yeah.”

“You’re saying that because she’s dead. It’s hard to stay angry at a dead woman, especially when she was so young and she was in so much pain and she fought so hard—”

“I know!”

“But she was kind of bitchy, you know?”

I snorted. “Vincent!”

“No, I mean it. If she had not been terminally ill, she would have no redeeming qualities.”

I lifted my head to gaze down at him again. “I would have forgiven her.”

He reached up to brush his knuckles over my cheek. “You know what? I know you would have. That’s exactly the kind of person you are, Leo.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THERE WERE OPEN apartments on top of Cork’s.

We told ourselves it was not moving in together, not yet, if Vincent and I were down the hall from each other. Even though he refused to charge me rent, and I was annoyed about it, but he said he was working remote to his job and I was currently unemployed, so it only made sense, and eventually, I let him win the argument.

He told me that I had to let him break the news to Damian about the two of us, and I did that.

Vincent took him out on the water, the two of them in a canoe, and they came back both dripping wet and Damian wasn’t speaking to Vincent for three weeks after that.

I assumed it did not go well, but Vincent didn’t talk to me about it.

“He’s annoyed,” said Vincent, “but I did try. I tried to give you up, and I couldn’t, and so, it’s something he’s going to have to come to terms with.”

“You don’t feel guilty?” I said. “About not choosing your little brother?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But we all have to make choices about how much we can sacrifice for the people we love. It turns out you’re just not one of those things. Everything’s better now that we’re together.”

He was right about that. It was.

I sometimes tried to convince myself it was not the relationship with Vincent that had changed everything about the way I looked at the world, because I didn’t want to be the sort of woman who was that obsessed with a man.