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"Hey," she said into the back of my bonnet.

"I'm fine."

"I know."

"Genuinely. Perfectly fine. These are happy tears. I've graduated to happy tears. That's significant character growth in every sappy romance movie I've ever watched."

Her arm tightened around me. Her mouth pressed to the top of my head, through the satin, and I felt that kiss somewhere much deeper. I was going to need to examine that later, when I had any brain cells left.

"I love you," she said simply. "I love you so much, Harper."

"I love you too." I pulled her arm tighter around me. "I want you to know I've been fighting it for a long fucking while. That's weeks of compounding interest on your emotional debt to me."

"I'll start paying it back immediately."

"You'd better. I have a spreadsheet."

"Of course you do."

I hesitated. "I also want to post about you."

There was a pause. It was shorter than I would have guessed.

"Okay."

I let that sit for a second. "Okay? Just like that?"

"Harper." Her voice was low and warm in the dark, and I was going to be completely undone by it every day for the rest of my life, and I had already made my peace with that. "I didn't come out tonight so I could draw new lines three hours later. Post whatever you want."

"My captions are going to be embarrassing."

"I'm counting on it."

"You say that now."

"I mean it. Post the cheese too. Tag me."

I laughed. It was clean and real and completely mine, because I'd finally been allowed to stop bracing, after bracing so long I'd forgotten what it felt like not to. I laughed until it went quiet, and the quiet that came after was the best kind. It was full instead of empty. It was the quiet of a room where a question had finally been answered.

Cam's hand moved slowly over my hip, back and forth, and I felt her breathing behind me slow and even out.

"Sleep," she said.

"I'm thinking."

"Think quieter."

"That's not a real instruction."

"It is now. I just made it one." There was a pause. Then, against the back of my neck, right where the knot used to be, she whispered, "I've got you, baby."

I closed my eyes.

Outside, the city kept its indifferent nighttime going. The string lights sent a line of gold under the bedroom door. My white noise app sat untouched on the nightstand, because Cam's breathing was doing everything that app had ever been designed to do. I was tired down to my bones in the best possible way, and she was here, and it was enough, and it was real.

I've got you.

I held onto that.