“About?”
“This weekend. Your friends. How strange it is that I fit.”
“Is that strange?”
“For me? Yes.” She watched the skyline emerge through the windshield, distant and glittering at first, then the bridges, then the familiar press of Brooklyn streets. “I have never been good at fitting. I’ve always been the outsider. The caterer. The one who didn’t quite belong.”
Gabriel pulled to a stop at a red light and turned to her.
“You belong. With them. With me. This is real.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it. Devney asked twice before we left when you’re coming back. Knox told me, in his own horrifying way, that you’re ‘acceptable.’ Ronan said you’re the first woman I’ve dated who doesn’t seem to actively dislike me. Which, coming from him, is significant.”
“That’s a lot.”
“It’s the truth.” The light changed, and he drove forward. “Tessa. You have nothing to prove.”
She didn’t know what to say.
“You fit. With all of it. With all of us. Ten times over.”
“Stop.” Her voice was thicker than she wanted. “You’re making me?—“
“What?”
“Feel things.”
“Good.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “You should feel things. Preferably about me.”
She laughed despite herself. “Arrogant.”
“Honest.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It really isn’t.”
They arrived at her building. Gabriel parked illegally with the confidence of someone who had seen a lot of parking tickets and found them an acceptable cost of doing business.
“Come up,” she said.
“I should let you rest. You have to work tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to rest.” She unbuckled her seatbelt. “I want you to come upstairs.”
“Tessa.”
“Please.”
He glanced down the block. “Then I’ll need to find a real spot.”
She leaned forward, scanning past him. “Half a block up. On the right.”
He followed her gaze and nodded. “I see it.”
He pulled into the space and cut the engine. When he opened the trunk, she reached for her bag.
