He set the brush down. His fingers combed through the result—smooth, damp, untangled. Then he lifted something from the counter.
His t-shirt. Soft gray cotton, worn thin from a hundred washes. He pulled it over my head. I lifted my arms automatically—the obedient gesture of a child being dressed—and the fabric slid down, engulfing me. The hem fell to my mid-thigh. The shoulders hung past mine. I was drowning in it, disappearing into the shape of him, and the feeling was so good it made my eyes sting.
I loved sleeping in his shirts. Loved the way they surrounded me with his scent, the way the softness of the worn cotton felt like being held even when he wasn't there. It was the closest thing to carrying him with me. A portable version of safety.
He guided me to the bed. Our bed, I thought, and the word bloomed in my chest like something planted months ago finally breaking through the soil. Not mine. Not his. Ours. The sheets were cool and crisp and he pulled them back, settled me against the pillows, drew the covers up to my chin with the same careful precision he brought to everything.
Then he climbed in beside me. Propped himself against the headboard, one arm along the pillow behind my head, his body warm and solid and right there.
"Story?" I asked.
My voice sounded small. Young. Softer than the voice I used in the world—the competent voice, the composed voice, the voice that had destroyed Victoria Marchetti at a charity gala with words sharp enough to draw blood. This was something else. This was the voice of the girl I'd stopped being at twelve, the one who'd loved bedtime stories and believed the world was a place where someone would always come to tuck her in.
The little I was learning to let myself be.
"Story," he confirmed.
He reached for his nightstand. A book was there—a worn copy of The Little Prince, the spine creased, the cover soft with age.
I curled against his side. My head found its place on his chest—the hollow beneath his collarbone, the spot that felt like it had been carved specifically for me. His heartbeat was steady beneath my ear. Slow. Strong. The metronome I was learning to set my life to.
He opened the book. Found their place—they'd been reading it in pieces, a few pages each night, though we'd only started last week. He cleared his throat softly.
"'If you please—draw me a sheep.'"
His voice was low. Warm. The words came out with a care that surprised me every time—Dante, who spoke in short, blunt sentences, who used language like a scalpel, reading a children's story with the tenderness of a prayer. The French names rolled off his tongue—le petit prince, le renard, la rose—and I didn't know if his pronunciation was perfect, but it sounded perfect to me.
I didn't need to follow the words. I'd read this book a dozen times. I knew the prince and his rose and the fox who taught him about taming. What mattered most is invisible to the eye.
The sound was enough. The safety was enough.
This man. This terrifying, tender, impossible man—reading me a bedtime story in lamplight while the city slept around us. Because I'd asked. Because I was his to care for. Because to him, I was the rose. Not a weakness to be hidden or a transaction to be leveraged or an alliance wrapped in white silk and delivered to an altar.
Just precious. Just worth tending. Just his.
Chapter 13
Dante
Sunlightwokeme.Notthe alarm, not the phone, not the particular silence that meant something had gone wrong in the night—just sunlight, warm and uncomplicated. It fell through the bedroom curtains in long golden bars that striped the sheets and turned Gemma's hair to dark silk across my chest.
I didn't move. Couldn’t.
She was still asleep. One hand curled beneath her chin, fingers loosely fisted, her breathing soft and even against my ribcage. My t-shirt had ridden up sometime in the night—the gray cotton bunched at her waist, one bare leg thrown over mine, her foot tucked between my calves like she'd been trying to get closer even in unconsciousness.
I lay there and memorized her.
The sweep of her lashes against her cheeks—darker than I'd expected, longer, casting tiny shadows in the morning light. The small curve at the corner of her mouth, a smile that existed even in sleep, like her body had finally learned that it was safe to behappy and didn't want to stop. The freckles across the bridge of her nose. Every square inch of her.
She burrowed closer. A small, unconscious movement, her cheek pressing harder against my chest, her fist tightening around a fold of the sheet. Even asleep, she reached for me. Even in the formless dark of dreams, her body knew where safety was and moved toward it.
Something bloomed in my chest. Something I'd been protecting for so long I'd forgotten it was there—a tenderness so acute it bordered on pain.
I pressed my lips against the crown of her head. Breathed her in. Lavender and vanilla from last night's bath, and beneath it the warm, particular scent that was just Gemma. The scent of my shirt on her skin. The scent of us, combined, no longer separable.
The ledger.
I let the thought surface.
