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“I loved him before I knew his face,” I say.

Silence as Edward’s hand stops. I turn my head and look up at him.

His eyes are wet. “Olive.”

“It is true.” I give a sweet smile.

I reach for Edward’s free hand and bring it to my mouth. “I loved your voice. Your silences. Your awful habit of apologizing to chairs you bumped into.”

“I did that once,” he murmurs.

“You did it often.”

“I was being polite.”

“To furniture.”

Lazarus nods gravely. I smile against Edward’s knuckles.

He continues the story, voice rougher now. “She spoke as if the world had no right to disappoint her, and somehow I believed her. I would leave those meetings and spend the rest of the day wondering what color her eyes were. Whether she smiled when she was cruel. Whether she had ever been held carefully enough.”

My throat tightens. His thumb brushes my lower lip.

“And then,” Lazarus says softly, “the workshop.”

Edward exhales. “And then the workshop.”

I remember color exploding into my life. The blood, the absurdity. Edward’s face. The recognition. The horror of understanding that the man I had trusted without seeing was standing before me in a room full of death.

“The night Jack lost his head,” Lazarus says proudly.

Alcott sighs. “He says that like it was a social achievement.”

“It was.”

“It was a logistical disaster,” Edward remarks.

“It was emotionally significant,” Lazarus states.

“It was both,” I say, looking between both men, amused.

Lazarus points at me. “Thank you.”

Edward’s hand slides over my back again, slower this time, less absent. His touch has changed with the story. Warmer. More deliberate. Still careful, but no longer afraid of its own wanting. I roll onto my side to face him and the blankets rustle around me. Edward’s gaze drops, then lifts immediately to my eyes. Always a gentleman.

I reach up and touch his jaw. “You may look at me.”

His breath catches. Lazarus’s expression shifts. Alcott’s too. The room changes, into something thick and honest as the rain keeps tapping against the glass, while the fire keeps burning low.

“Olive,” Edward says quietly.

“Yes.”

His hand stills at my waist. “Are you sure?”

I smile faintly. “You ask that so beautifully.”

“I will ask forever.”