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“Your personality can stay.” Hannah brushed his bangs out of his eyes. “I’m coming back around to it.” His grin lit up everything inside her. Holy shit, he was trouble when he smiled. When he wasn’t around, she wondered how he’d managed to talk her into quite so many bad ideas over the years, but this was the answer. She had no recourse against that smile.
She suddenly realized something. “Blue, holy shit. You came in second in one of the biggest cooking competitions in the world.”
His grin turned smug. “Fuck yeah I did. I’m areallygood chef.”
“Will you do something for me, Blue?” she asked, her heart caught up in his eyes, her hope bolstered by his.
“Anything in the whole world.”
“Will you kiss me?”
“I’ve kissed you several times recently, and none of them were great for either of us emotionally,” he said softly.
She nodded. “I know, but all of those times were kissing so we didn’t have to talk about our feelings, and I want to kiss you only because you’re my person and we’re in love and we’re trying like hell to figure out what that means, but we’re going to figure it out together. Kiss me because even if it’s going to blow up in our faces once and for all, you love kissing me?”
He sucked in a breath, and his eyes welled up, then his face was on hers and his arms were surrounding her completely, and his lips were her only lifeline. This kiss was the first time in so many years that they’d kissed not to fight or escape, or because they were wrestling with things they couldn’t say. It was the first time in a long, long time they were kissing not to lose themselves but to find each other.
It was bittersweet and aching and she tasted every kiss they’d missed, every dream of each other they’d woken up from sweating, every phone call they hadn’t made. It was their first kiss again, but a hundred thousand times better and worse. Because they knew each other’s bodies, likes, needs, and they knew everything they’d left and maybe lost forever.
His eyes glittered with unshed tears as he pulled away, and her nails caught in the hair on the back of his neck, trying to keep him from leaving.
“So I know we decided we weren’t going to fool around until we figured out what we were doing, but does this count? We’re figuring it out, right?” Hannah asked.
Levi laughed. “That might be moving the goalposts a little, baby. Besides, I love you so much, but I don’t want to have sex on this blanket. There are so many bugs. Maybe we can try, I don’t know, having sex in a bed? With pillows? Or finally get that quickie on your desk.”
“Both?” Hannah asked hopefully.
“Both is good.”
“Okay. Rabbi first, sex later.” She nodded. “That’s probably smarter anyway.”
“Cockblocked by our own emotional maturity,” Levi lamented.
“I truly never thought I’d see the day.”
Rabbi Ruth was Hannah’s favorite person outside of the Carrigan’s crew. They walked with the aid of a cane topped with a wolf’s head that Hannah thought was the coolest thing she’d ever seen, and always spoke very thoughtfully and purposefully. They never said anything they weren’t sure of.
When they’d been called to the local congregation, Hannah had been worried that they would face immense pushback from the community, but the members of the congregation would probably have fought a lion for their rabbi. Hannah certainly would have. She had been avoiding services so she wouldn’t have to face Ruth’s knowing eye, one that could immediately suss out trouble, and she’d missed them desperately.
She threw herself into their arms when she saw them, and the rabbi laughed at her.
They looked Levi up and down and cocked an eyebrow at Hannah. “Is this the reason you’ve been avoiding us? You didn’t want to have to answer questions about the long-lost Matthews boy?” They looked at Levi some more. “You have your mother’s smile. I like your floral yarmulke.”
“Do you want to swap?” Levi touched his self-consciously. “I made this one. I can make more. I didn’t realize you knew my parents.”
They grimaced. “I do not want to swap because I don’t like other people’s hair touching mine. It’s gross. If you have an extra, I will take it the next time you come to services. I’m not technically your parents’ rabbi, because they belong to a synagogue in Plattsburgh, but they’re often here, and I adore them.”
“They are the actual best. Did they tell you terrible things about me?” Levi asked, flattening his bangs. Hannah grabbed his hand to stop the nervous gesture.
“They did not,” Rabbi Ruth said, “although both Noelle and Esther did.”
Levi shrugged a little at this, and Ruth gestured at the two of them to walk toward their office. “Come on back, tell me what’s going on. I can’t wait to hear this one. All of you, Cass’s kids, you’re always in the middle of something.”
“I love them,” Levi whispered to Hannah as he followed them into Ruth’s office. “I want them to be my rabbi.”
“We can arrange that,” Hannah whispered back.
Ruth closed the door behind them and gestured to a chintz sofa covered in pillows.
