She understood. She was grateful. “How is he?”
“He’s fine. Busy being exactly who he is.”
Bea let out a breath that almost passed for a laugh. “He could never be less.”
Nate seemed to be checking something he couldn’t ask outright. “You’re okay.”
Her face warmed. He’d been a friend to her. “I’m more than okay.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
She caught navy in her peripheral vision. Rafael came up beside them, close enough that she didn’t need to turn. His hand found the gap at the back of her graduation gown and settled low on her back. The heat of his palm hit spine, then nerve.
“There’s my wife,” he said against her temple, voice pitched for her alone. She smiled up at him in welcome. Rafael glanced at Nate. “West.”
“Griffin,” Nate returned in the same polite tone. “Congratulations on your nuptials.”
They shook, neither one blinking. Bea’s mind flashed to an event years ago, Nate stepping between them and escorting her out of Rafael’s orbit. Rafael’s hand remained where it was now, a wordless promise that nobody would be steering her anywhere again.
“I should do the rounds,” Nate said. “Nice to see you, Bea. Griffin.”
“You too,” she said.
He vanished into the sea of black gowns, and with him, every version of another life.
Bea wrapped both her arms tight around Rafael’s waist. He liked when she did that. She could tell by the way his body relaxed. “You found me.”
“Of course I did,” he murmured, hand framing one side of her face.
Someone cleared their throat just to her left, loud enough to be intentional. She forced her attention toward the voice and away from Rafael’s jawline.
“Jaxon!”
“Bea. Griffin.”
Rafael’s posture shifted, infinitesimally. “Dao.”
Jaxon, for his part, was unfazed. All the unreasonable was coming from her husband. A single nod passed between the men. Bea didn’t roll her eyes, but it was a close call.
“Could you take a picture of us?” she asked Rafael sweetly. He looked like he’d rather swallow glass. She elbowed him, gentle and insistent. “I only finished my Capstone project because of him.”
He lifted the phone without comment. She and Jaxon posed. The shutter clicked, and by the look of it, Rafael’s molars did the same.
Bea checked the photo. Jaxon wore a gold medal large enough to anchor a yacht, wearing the exact same expression he used for a moderately satisfactory spreadsheet.
“Summa cum laude and still no charisma.” Bea shook her head.
“I let the medal smile for me,” Jaxon returned. Someone called his name. “See you after your honeymoon.”
“My graduate!” Umma pulled her into a fierce embrace. Papa passed her a bouquet that could have been smuggled out of a royal coronation.
“You were elegant up there,” Papa said, voice gruffer than usual, and kissed her cheek.
Claire, trailing behind, presented a stuffed shark twice the size of her torso, wearing a tiny mortarboard. “I panicked,” she explained. “And I named him Fin Diesel.”
Bea broke into helpless laughter as she reached for the shark with her other arm. “He’s perfect. He reminds me of someone.” She grinned at Rafael.
“Octavian has a friend,” Rafael said dryly, referring to their three-foot-tall sunglasses-wearing octopus that he’d won her from the summer fair. “We’re going to need to extend our house for your soft toys.”
