She held my gaze. "But I'm not ready to give this a name. I have a business that lives or dies on what people in this town think of my judgment. I have a family that depends on that business. Whatever this is, I need to walk into it with my eyes open. Not fall into it."
"That's fair."
"That means no labels. Not yet. We see each other, we figure out what this is, and when one of us knows something, we say it." Her chin came up a fraction. "Can you live with that?"
"Yeah," I said. It came out fast. Easy. With more relief in it than I would have preferred to show her.
She caught that, too. I watched her catch it, watched it go into the file she was keeping, the one with my record and my dead mother and the answer I hadn't been able to give her. She said nothing about it.
"Good." She yawned and settled against my chest, fitting there in a way I refused to examine. "Then I'm staying tonight. Your cats and I have made our peace."
"They're not my cats. They're Sofia's."
"Either way, they're witnesses," she murmured, her voice already going soft at the edges. "They've seen everything. They'll keep it to themselves."
I held her as her breathing evened out, staring at the ceiling, my hand moving slowly over her hair.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Sofia, telling me to stop grinning at the ceiling and go to sleep because I had work in the morning. I wondered if the old girl ever slept. I texted back a smiley face and set the phone down before she could start a conversation.
The lamp hummed. The cats watched. Nadia's hand had found its way back to my ribs, holding on in her sleep the way she had the night before, like she'd grabbed something and had no intention of letting it go.
I'd had the words. They were still there, sitting in my chest, no smaller for having stayed put.
I told myself I'd say them when saying them wouldn't send her out the door. That the words would keep. That a man who'd waited six months could wait a while longer for the right moment.
It sounded reasonable.
Most things do, at two in the morning, when the person you're selling them to is yourself.
EIGHT
NADIA
I woke to sunlight streaming through pink candy-striped curtains and the smell of coffee, disoriented and wondering where the hell I was.
Then I spotted the ceramic cats and doilies, felt the unfamiliar weight of the comforter, and everything from last night came rushing back.
The dinner with Sofia. The garden walk. The whiskey. The sex. The confession.
Not a declaration, though. I'd noticed that. I'd handed him the most reckless sentence I'd said to anyone in years, then watched him reach for a matching one and come up short.
I'm not going anywhere.
The words a man gives you when the other words won't come.
It should have stung. Maybe it had for a second. But then he'd done the thing I hadn't expected. He'd told me the truth about it.
It's not everything. It's the part I know how to say.
I'd been lied to by experts in my time, and I knew how it sounded when a man told me what I wanted to hear. But that hadn't been it.
My heart did something unexpected, anyway.
I sat up, pulling the sheet with me, and found Daemon standing in the doorway, holding two mugs of coffee. He was already dressed for work, jeans and a Lucky Break t-shirt, his hair still damp from the shower.
"Morning," he said, a smile playing on his lips. "Thought you might need this."
I took the mug, inhaling the steam. "What time is it?"
