His voice stayed level, but I could see what the effort was costing him. "Then I sat in a bar in Millbrook and listened to a stranger describe a man who decided his losses in advance and called it protecting people. And I finally heard her. That's what it was, Nadia. I told myself I was protecting you from myself. What I was doing was getting the loss over with early, while I could still pick the terms. You were the best thing I ever had, and I burned my own house down so the fire couldn't surprise me."
"Yes," I said.
"You did."
"I know."
"I love you." He said it simply, the way he'd talked about his record in there. Like something he'd carried long enough to know its exact weight, and had decided he was done pretending otherwise.
"I've known it for a while, Nadia, and I've been terrified of it because the last time I loved someone that much, I failed her. I couldn't figure out how to be sure I wouldn't fail you too."
The parking lot was quiet around us.
"I'm more terrified of losing you," he said. "That's what I finally figured out. The math only works one way."
"Terrified together," I said. It came out before I'd decided. The deal I'd offered him in the dark weeks ago, asking for nothing back. "That offer never expired."
"I know," he said. "I'm taking it."
I'd been holding myself together for weeks. Dealing with the complaints and the legal fees, and the spreadsheets that didn't balance. Then, at the meeting tonight, in that room, he'd said things I hadn't known I needed to hear until I heard them.
I was done holding myself together.
"I don't need you to be perfect," I said. "I never did. I need you to stay. That's what reliability actually means. Not getting everything right. Not leaving when things get hard."
"I'm not going anywhere." His voice was rough. "Ever."
I closed the distance between us.
The kiss wasn't quiet or careful. It was the sort that happened when two people had been holding something back for too long and finally stopped. His hands came up to my face and mine went to his jacket, and somewhere behind us the community hall door opened and I heard voices and I genuinely did not care.
When we finally broke apart, there were people in the parking lot. Kelly. Skye. Bill Kowalski. A handful of others who had the good grace to pretend they’d seen nothing, except for Kelly, who was smiling wide enough to be visible in the dark from twenty feet away.
"We should go," I said against his mouth.
"Yeah," he agreed, not moving.
"Daemon."
"I know. I know." He pulled back far enough to look at me. "Your place or mine?"
I thought about my parents' garage apartment, with its temporary furniture and its view of the street and the feeling I'd had every night of living somewhere provisional.
"Yours," I said.
His expression became rueful. "Sofia's going to hear us pull up."
"I know."
"She's going to be insufferable about it."
"I know that, too." I took his hand. "Let's go."
DAEMON
Sofia's porch light was on when we pulled up, Nadia's van having been abandoned in the hall parking lot. The porch light was on. No surprise there.
My in-house culinary mafioso left it on every night because she said a dark porch was an unwelcoming porch, and Sofia had strong views about hospitality.
