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The house is warm, inviting, with small bits of Toren Kane in every square inch. His motorcycle boots by the door, his coat on the rack, a photo of Sahara and Toren from a fall day in front of a pastry shop, the photo below it of the three of them in front of TD Garden. He’s everywhere in this house; in a way he never was in any temporary home growing up. In a way I never was inside my own family home.

It didn’t matter what Toren said. This was his home. These people loved him, as if he was their son. That was . . . that was everything.

Steps away from the kitchen and entryway, I stop dead in my tracks.

“It’s . . .” The words are half frozen in my mouth as I stare up at the walls of the Harris home, Sahara just hovering over my shoulder. Her hand pushes my hair from the collar of my shirt where it’s gotten caught, smoothing it lovingly down my back. It makes something warm in my chest glow brighter, barely resisting the urge to snuggle into her arms like a needy kitten.

“Do you like it?” she asks softly. “I wasn’t sure if you’d find it odd with them all here, but it felt like a gallery wall. There’re a few in Toren’s room as well.”

My paintings, all of them from my first art show here, they’re all here. Hung with care across the living room and hallway walls. The too-large mosaic-style vase, the floral works, my entire landscape series—every single one.

“I didn’t know you bought more,” I say.

Sahara smiles. “Oh, I didn’t. Toren did.”

Toren did.

A memory flickers, Toren’s locker in prep school littered with my drawings and paintings on the inside, until they wouldn’t fit. His support of me a bright guiding light I could always find in the dark.

I blink back tears as her words pull tight around my heart, threading around my soul in the same way his support always has. As if she knows I’m close to crying, Sahara tucks an arm around my shoulder and leads me toward the kitchen.

“Let’s get the boys for dinner, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

• • •

I’ve never been in a home of Toren’s. There’s part of me that doesn’t believe he’s considered himself to have one. As kids, I was never allowed to be in the house he called home. I’d never dared to try, didn’t even know where it was. I knew the general vicinity of it, the side of town he came from, but mostly because I heard the things students said to him. The comments he always thought he was protecting me from.

“Did you do all this?” I ask, fingers ghosting over the painted walls, the hanging framed records, the white electric guitar with a zebra stripe strap.

“No,” Toren says, almost sheepish. “Um . . . Sahara did it for me.”

He shrugs as if he doesn’t know why. My chest hurts.

There was a part of me that always thought I was filling whatever was lacking for Toren, as if my presence in his life was enough, and perhaps there was a piece of him that felt the same. But this? Family? Motherly affection? The space and care that Mr. and Mrs. Harris have given him was never going to be something I could even attempt to replace.

I saw the way she doted on him over dinner. The gentle, easy affection they both have for Toren. They love him, just as I knew they did.

“I like it,” I say, before stepping toward the record player. “Can I . . .”

Toren nods, his hands in his pockets as he watches me fondly.

Butterflies erupt in my stomach as I look back at him, feeling a warm heavy feeling in my gut, aroused by the sight of him.

And then, I remember—he’s my husband—and that light arousal bleeds into intense desperation.

I put on Cigarettes After Sex, then turn to where Toren’s now sitting on the bed, slinking to stand between his thighs.

“You bought all my paintings.”

He nods, his fingers brushing up my calf to the back of my knee.

“You love me.”

“I do,” he says reverently as he presses a kiss to the center of my chest. We’re practically eye level. I sink my hands into his thick, dark hair, before leaning down to kiss up his neck, tongue dancing over the piercings he’s started wearing in his ears again.

“Can they hear us down here?”