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Adeline texted yesterday: Whoever he is, you sound happy.

I responded: I am. For the first time in a long time, I truly am.

She sent back a blue heart, and that was that.

This afternoon I’m teaching Sarah piano. She has decided she wants to learn “a real song,” by which she means anything other than scales, and I’ve chosen “On Top of Spaghetti” in C. It was one of the first pieces I ever learned, and it lets her feel like a prodigy.

Her small fingers stab at the keys with total confidence and no accuracy, and I correct her hand position for the fourth time, and she informs me that Mozart probably didn’t have to do it this way.

“Mozart absolutely had to do it this way. Everyone starts with scales. Even Mozart. Even Pip.”

She giggles at that. “Pip doesn’t play piano.”

“Pip plays a tiny piano when you’re asleep. It’s very advanced, and she practices her scales, which is why she’s so good.”

Sarah accepts the lie and returns to butchering the song with renewed conviction. I feel the doorway before I see it, the way you learn to feel your person’s attention land on your back.

Lupo leans against the frame, jacket off, watching us with an expression he doesn’t bother to hide anymore. He’s stopped hiding a lot of things since the hospital.

Not the business—that door stays shut—but the watching is no longer hidden. He’s arranged his evenings to end wherever Sarah and I are. He used to guard his expressions. Now he just lets me see them, and what’s on it when he watches me teach his daughter piano has nothing to do with a cover operation. He’s forgotten that this was all supposed to be another lie.

Sarah finishes her song and bolts off to report her musical acumen to Nonna. And then, it’s just us and the piano and an afternoon with nothing scheduled in it.

“You’ve been staring,” I say, still facing the keys, still smiling.

“You’re worth staring at. I’ve decided to stop apologizing for it.”

“That’s new. The not-apologizing.”

“A lot is new.” He says it lightly, but his eyes don’t do light. They never have. I’m not sure it’s in him.

I turn on the bench, and he crosses the room to sit beside me. We sit quietly for a while, his shoulder touching mine, as the late afternoon sun streams in gold through the tall windows. Out of the corner of my eye, shadows play on the planes of his face, from his high cheekbone to his strong, stubbly jaw. He smells like cedar and comfort, and I know I shouldn’t say it, but I can’t avoid saying it any longer.

“I’m not pretending anymore, Lupo.” I keep my eyes on the piano because it’s easier than his face. “I want you to know that. Whatever this started as—a contract, a kidnapping, a role I was paid to forcibly play—I stopped acting a while ago, and I couldn’t tell you when, and it doesn’t matter.”

He goes very still beside me.

“I’m not acting like your wife anymore, Lupo. I’m just here. I’m choosing to be here, and I think you knew that when I didn’t try to leave with Mark, but I wanted to say it out loud before I lost the nerve.”

He doesn’t answer right away. He opens his mouth and closes it, and this articulate, word-lawyering man has, for once, no words at all.

A month ago, I’d have read the silence as rejection. I know him better now.

He answers the way he knows how.

He takes my face in both hands and kisses me, and when he pulls back to look at me, his thumbs move over my cheekbones as if he’s confirming I’m here with him. “Talk upstairs.”

Not a command. A request.

I take his hand off the piano lid and answer it by standing. We go up in the last of the daylight. Our room is warm and gold, and he undresses me, a kiss wherever my clothes last touched my skin. I get his shirt off and press my mouth to the bad scar. A deep sound rumbles from his throat.

There are no words. No schedule, no roles, none of the armor we sometimes wear when we’re naked. Only us in the whispered golden sunset light.

Lupo’s mouth travels down my body, his hands attending my nipples, my hips. That wicked tongue takes so much time appreciating my tits that I think he’ll be too tired for anywhere else.

I am wrong.

He lifts my thighs over his shoulders, and every lick is art. I can’t help but roll my hips to meet his face, can’t hold still. Not that he wants me to—the more I ride his face, the louder he growls into me. That stubbly chin presses against my most sensitive places, making my back arch from the bed. It’s too much, too good, too⁠—