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She nodded. “I was making a list, people in our lives who we owe some thanks to. Since my accident especially, after everything.”

None too subtly, Aster leaned forward to read what she’d typed.

“The cat gets a spot?”

“Pawntès trusted you when I didn’t know if I could. He’s an excellent judge of character.”

“Simon is on your list?” he asked, incredulity evident.

“Seeing him helped,” she said simply. “That dinner was an awful time, but I had to see him again to realize I’d already let him go.” She pressed her knee against Aster’s beneath the table.

“I don’t advise telling Eli you have him on there. He’ll be insufferable.”

“I know. But how could I not? He’s the only one who refused to coddle me in the beginning while everyone else treated me like I was made of glass.”

“At least Alannah makes sense,” Aster conceded, one hand flipping her braid over her shoulder before trailing a soft line to her wrist.

“She’s how I figured out we were trying for kids. And then you and I had that fight in the garden.”

He stiffened beside her, lazy fingers paused along her arm.

“We needed that fight,” she continued. “It changed everything, I think.”

“I assume Justine gets her spot for being one of your best friends?”

Molly smiled. “She does. And my dad has a spot too, obviously. Our relationship was one of the most welcome surprises in all this. The fact that he likes you didn’t hurt either. And your mother is on there because of the taffies.” Simultaneously, their eyes drifted to the bowl on the table in front of them. “I love the hope they represent for you.”

Aster reached out and tapped Molly’s wedding ring. “Bentley, obviously. For helping to facilitate that beautiful date for your birthday.” Aster paused for a beat before adding, “And because he helped me, so much, when I needed to pull myself together. He might have read as much about brain trauma as I did.” Molly added his name without a breath of consideration.

With zero subtlety, Aster dragged his chair closer to hers.

Then, as if it were a completely normal way to sit with someone, he leaned down to hook an arm beneath her knees, twisting her to drape her legs over his own. Now she sat sideways, bridged between their two chairs.

She swatted at his hands that immediately began climbing from knee to thigh along her flannel pajama bottoms.

“You’re ridiculous,” she laughed. “I’m not finished with my list.”

He loosed a dramatic sigh and, as an unspoken compromise, removed one hand from her thigh, leaving the other firmly in place, massaging heat through fabric straight to flesh.

He looked very serious before saying, “The sofa.”

“You want me to put a piece of furniture on my gratitude list?”

“We lived a lot of life with it before all this began, obviously, but I did also spend a lot of time on it last year. And now it’s been reincarnated.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Alright, I’ll allow it. If we’re crediting an inanimate object, we’re crediting Roy for replacing it and finding us the rest of the set.”

“Must we include Waters?” Aster asked with a mock pout, bygones long gone.

“I think we must. He’s Roy.” To soothe the blow, she leaned in to kiss him.

And with that, Molly couldn’t take the heat of his proximity any longer. She shifted again, abandoning her chair in favor of his, and straddled his lap. Melting against his solid form, she wrapped her arm around his neck, dragging her nails through his hair. He groaned, one arm anchoring her more firmly against his lap.

Leaning in, he began dropping kisses along her clavicle.

“You know who’s missing from your list?” he asked against her breastbone. “You.”

She’d already forgotten what she’d been doing, her attention on his jaw, lips traveling the hard line that helped make him so striking. “I didn’t do anything,” she mumbled against his skin.