Page 41 of Marrying the Pakhan

“For what it’s worth,” he adds, catching me at the door, “whatever it is, it looks good on you. You’re easier to be around lately. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

“Careful, Dimitri. You’re starting to sound sentimental.”

“Don’t get used to it.” He waves me off, already turning back toward his office, and I leave with the strange, unfamiliar sensation of my own brother approving of something in my life that isn’t business.

I drive home thinking about logistics men and borrowed names and a threat still sitting unresolved somewhere out there, and by the time I walk through my own front door, all of it quiets, the way it always does now the second I hear her voice somewhere in the house.

I find them in the kitchen, Harper crouched down helping Ginger ice a lopsided cake that looks like it survived a minor structural collapse, flour dusted across both of them, Ginger narrating every swipe of the knife like it’s a surgical procedure.

“It’s supposed to be a dinosaur,” Ginger informs me, without looking up. “It looks more like a rock.”

“It looks like a very ambitious rock.”

“That’s what Harper said too.”

“Great minds,” Harper says, not looking up from smoothing frosting into something vaguely resembling a spike. “Come hold the piping bag, you have steadier hands than either of us.”

I do as I’m told, and for the next ten minutes the three of us work on a cake that has no realistic chance of resembling any dinosaur that ever existed, Ginger directing the operation with total confidence, Harper laughing every time the frosting slides in a direction nobody intended.

I lean against the counter and just watch them for a while once my piping duties are dismissed, the two of them completely absorbed in a project that means nothing and everything at once, and my chest goes warm and tight in a way I don’t try to name right away.

Harper catches me watching and smiles, easy, unguarded, flour on her cheek she hasn’t noticed yet, and I think, not for the first time, that I could stand in this doorway for the rest of my life and never once feel like I was missing anything.

Later, once Ginger’s asleep and the kitchen’s been cleaned of most of the evidence, Harper finds me on the back porch, same spot as always.

“You were quiet at dinner,” she says, sitting beside me.

“I was thinking.”

“About?”

I could give her the easy answer, deflect the way I’ve trained myself to for fifteen years. Instead, I look at her, and decide I’m done doing that with her specifically.

“About how much I don’t want to keep any part of myself separate from you anymore.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “I’ve spent my whole life keeping distance from everyone, treating closeness like a liability. I don’t want that with you. I haven’t wanted it in weeks, if I’m honest, and I’m done pretending otherwise.”

Harper goes still, studying my face like she’s checking whether I mean it as much as it sounds like I do. “That’s not a small thing to say.”

“No. It isn’t.” I reach for her hand, lace our fingers together. “I’m not asking you to say it back tonight. I just needed you to hear it.”

“I don’t need until tonight to say it back.” Her voice is quiet, certain. “I’ve been done pretending for a while now too.”

I kiss her before either of us can say anything else, slower than the porch kiss weeks ago, none of the restraint that held both of us back that first almost-time, and this time nothing interrupts it, no hesitation, nothing standing between what we both clearly want.

I stand, pulling her up with me, and this time there’s no question of whose room we’re heading toward.

I close the bedroom door behind us, and the lock turns with a soft click.

Harper stands a few feet away, watching me. There’s no nervousness in her face this time. Just waiting. I walk to her slowly, stop close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her body, and start with the buttons of her shirt.

One. Two. Three. My fingers don’t rush. I watch each inch of skin as it appears.

When the shirt is open, I push it off her shoulders. It falls. I unhook her bra next, slide the straps down her arms, and let that fall too. She doesn’t try to cover herself. She just lets me look.

“You’re quiet,” she says softly.

“I’m deciding something.”

“What?”