“Dylan.”
“Three,” I said. “Four if you keep stopping.”
Her eyes darkened.
There it was.
The thing we had been circling for months.
Not grief.
Not guilt.
Not forbidden.
Want.
Alive and honest and standing in a kitchen built from every secret hope I had never been brave enough to say.
Destiny’s fingers slid down my jaw, then rested against my chest.
My heart beat hard beneath her palm.
“You’re sure?” she whispered.
That nearly killed me.
After all the years I had made choices for her, she was asking me.
I covered her hand with mine. “Beautiful, I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Her breath caught.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
“Me too.”
“Of ruining it.”
“We won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” I said. “But I know I’m done letting fear make my decisions.”
Her eyes searched mine.
Whatever she found there made her step back, take my hand, and lead me through the house.
Not upstairs yet.
She wanted to see it all.
The bathroom with the pale tile and brass fixtures she had once called “not obnoxious, which is high praise.” The little back patio with herbs, lavender, and the doomed basil plant.
She laughed when she saw it.
“You planted basil?”
