I turned to look at him, and he was smiling at me with that soft expression again, and I realized he wasn't watching the capybaras anymore. He was watching me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. You're just—you look happy.”
“I'm feeding a capybara. Of course I'm happy.”
“Yeah. I can tell.”
The capybara with the notched ear nuzzled against my hand, and I scratched behind her ears while trying not to think about how Rook had planned this whole thing just to make me smile.
We spent the next hour feeding vegetables to capybaras and learning their individual stories from Diane. There was Gerald, who'd been rescued from a roadside zoo. Petunia, who'd been someone's illegal pet before animal control got involved. And Kevin, the enlightened one in the sun patch, who'd apparently been surrendered by a family who'd realized too late that exotic animals made terrible impulse purchases.
“Kevin's a mood,” I said, watching him bask without a care in the world.
“Kevin's living his best life,” Diane agreed.
By the time we left, I was covered in hay and my hands smelled like vegetables, and I couldn't stop smiling. Rook drove us back through the city while I rambled about capybara facts I'd forgotten I knew, and he listened with the kind of patience that made me wonder what I'd done to deserve him.
“Thank you,” I said when we hit a red light.
“For what?”
“For remembering. For planning this. For giving me a day that didn't feel like a disaster.”
He reached over and laced his fingers through mine. “You don't have to thank me for wanting to spend time with you.”
“Yeah, I do. Because you could be doing literally anything else, and you chose to take me to see capybaras.”
“Best decision I've made all week.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The light turned green, and he squeezed my hand once before letting go to drive. I settled back in my seat and watched the city lights start to come on as the sun dipped lower, and I felt that same flicker of hope from earlier—the one that said maybe I could have this. Maybe I could have good days and someone who remembered the small things and a future that didn't feel like borrowed time.
It wasn't a fix. Wasn't a miracle. But it was real, and it was mine, and for now that felt like enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
officially, apparently
SOREN
Iwoke up with sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the ocean doing its steady breathing thing beyond the glass, and for the first time in weeks I felt like a person instead of a collection of barely-functioning survival mechanisms held together by spite and caffeine.
The exhaustion was still there, sitting in my bones like an old friend I'd learned to live with. But underneath that was a lightness I hadn't felt in so fucking long that it took me a minute to recognize what it was.
Hope. Actual, genuine hope that things might be okay.
Rook was already awake, propped up on one elbow and watching me with an expression that made my chest do uncomfortable things. When he saw I was awake, he leaned down and kissed me, slow and thorough, like he had all the time in the world to remind me I was wanted.
“Morning,” he said when he pulled back.
“Morning.” I stretched, feeling muscles pull in ways that reminded me exactly what we'd done last night, and grinned at the ceiling. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine. I was gonna let you sleep, but you've got a date with your siblings at my parents' house in an hour.”
