Page 70 of Ruthless Claim

Then, the cafeteria and the question I asked that I didn’t mean to ask and the answer he gave.

I don’t have words.

I turn in his arms and find him staring at me, his blue eyes questioning.

Without thinking, I lean forward and kiss him. It’s different from how it usually is between us. This is something that isn’t about the rules.

This is just me and him in our bedroom with the pink sky coming through the curtain gap and the whole night still living in both of us.

He kisses me back the same way. His hands are gentle and I stop thinking and performing, and for a little while there’s just this.

I want more but I am so deeply tired that staying awake is no longer something my body is willing to negotiate. I put my face against his chest and listen to his heartbeat and I think, on the very edge of sleep, He meant that. What am I going to do with that?

No answer comes. My eyes are already closing. His arm is around me and he is warm and solid and so familiar now that the familiarity of him has become part of what this apartment means, part of what my life means.

Outside the window, on the other side of town, Seraphina Brennan Santoro is nearly four hours old.

Meanwhile, I am safe.

I am actually genuinely safe.

I am in my husband’s arms feeling something I had almost stopped believing was possible for someone like me.

I fall asleep before I can name it.

8

CILLIAN

Two months in and I know I’m completely, thoroughly, irreversibly fucked.

Not operationally fucked. I know how to handle that. I’ve been handling that since I was fourteen and Connor first put me in a room with men twice my size and told me to figure it out.

No, this is the domestic kind of fucked, which is worse, because there is no response to waking up at four in the morning and lying there listening to your wife breathe.

This is the kind of fucked where you’re holding a Post-it note that says arrogant turtle in Mandarin and you’re smiling at it before you remember you’re not supposed to be smiling at it.

The Post-it notes start on a random day.

I came into the kitchen and there was a small yellow square stuck to the espresso machine.

I peeled it off and studied the words. It looks like Italian, but I have no idea what it said. I googled it.

Testa dura. Hardheaded.

Which—alright, that’s not exactly an insult, at least to me it isn’t. I stood there with my coffee deciding what to do about it. I did nothing.

Instead, I went to work.

When I came home there was one on my laptop in French—têtu comme une mule. Stubborn as a mule. I still said nothing. This is clearly a game and I’m good at games.

Two days later, she put one on my bathroom mirror in what the camera app told me was Mandarin: arrogant turtle. Something must be lost in translation because I fail to see what would be so arrogant about a turtle.

Nevertheless, I took it down and put it in my jacket pocket. I told myself I needed to throw it away later, but I never did.

The next morning there is one on my coffee mug. She’d drawn a tiny crown on this one, underneath the Greek—arrogant king.

A king, huh? I don’t think she meant for it to be a compliment, but I’ll damn well take it as one.