“I’m saying it.”
His eyes held mine. Steady, certain. The same eyes that had looked down at me through a cloud of furious bees the day I’d crashed into his life. They were looking at me now with a certainty that took up every inch of the room.
“Stay,” he said. “Not one more day. Stay.”
I kissed him. Soft, salt-stained, his hand on our baby. When I pulled back his gaze had shifted. The calm was still there but the heat had risen underneath it, because there was nothing between us now, no lies, no performances, no careful edits, and we had the whole night.
“Flora.”
“Mm.”
“We have a lot to figure out.”
“We do.” I traced my fingers down his bare stomach to his waistband and felt the muscles jump. “But right now, I want you to take me back to that bed and not be careful about it.”
His grip tightened on my hips, and he picked me up.
We did not make it to the bed.
Chapter Six
ATLAS
DAWN INSPECTION. SAMEas every morning. I pulled a frame from the first hive and held it to the early light, and for once since Flora Diaz had crashed into my life I was not thinking about her.
I was thinking about the woman asleep in my bed who was carrying my child and had told me everything without stopping for air, standing in my hallway with her shirt on backwards. Different thing entirely.
Good brood pattern. Queen laying well. Foragers already heading toward the balsamroot along the south meadow, the first big push of spring. I set the frame back, closed the hive, and stood in the cool air with my hands steady and my pulse running harder than it should have for a man standing still.
The truth was out. She was still here. And I was checking brood patterns at dawn because my chest was so full the only thing I could do was work.
I was going to marry her. The thought arrived fully formed, no preamble, the way a queen cell appears in a hive. You don’t see it being built. You just look one day and it’s there, inevitable.
From inside the cabin: humming. Off-key, wandering, the kind of humming a person does when they think they’re alone.I heard the kettle click off. A cabinet opening. The blue mug, probably. She’d claimed it without discussion.
I went inside.
She was barefoot at the counter in my T-shirt, the soft gray cotton hanging to mid-thigh, collar wide enough to show her collarbone and the mark I’d left on her shoulder. Her hair was a dark tangle from my pillow. She was pouring tea with the concentration of a woman performing surgery.
“You’re up early,” she said, not turning around.
“I’m always up early.”
“You’re up early and you’ve already been to the hives. I can smell the propolis.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“I’m making tea. Your decaf is on the counter, by the way. Your decaf.” She narrowed her gaze. “I want you to know I am composing a formal grievance. In writing. About the decaf.”
“A grievance.”
“An itemized grievance. Point one: you watched me drink three cups of it and compliment the flavor. Point two: you thanked me for the compliment. You looked me in the eye and said ‘I tried a different roast’ with a completely straight face.”
“It was a different roast.”
“It was decaf, Atlas. You decaffeinated me without my consent. I complimented the decaf. I told you it was better than usual. I may have said the word ‘smooth.’”
“You did say smooth.”
