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"That's it? Yes?" I laughed and swiped at my face. "God, give me a little more than that."

"You told me not to produce anything." He was laughing and crying at the same time, which is a thing he does and which I had forgotten I loved. "So. Yes."

"You're going to say more."

"I'm absolutely going to say more."

"I know you are."

"Just not this morning," said Gregory, and put his forehead against mine and stayed there. We sat like that on the end of the bed with the door open and the sun coming up over the top of the meadow.

"Gregory."

"Mm."

"You can have it back."

"Have what back?"

"The name," I said. “Solstice.”

He didn't answer. He only made a small noise against my shoulder and held on tighter, and that was the entire conversation.

Eventually we heard Martin clear his throat.

Gregory squeezed my hand.

"Martin," he breathed. "Go back to the hotel."

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Gregory

We heard the Suburban go back down the drive and neither of us watched it go.

We were still on the end of the bed with our foreheads together. The tires on the gravel got quieter and then there was nothing at all, just a bird somewhere outside and Blaine breathing.

He lifted his head and looked at me.

I have known that man eleven years and I have never seen his face do what it did then. The careful part was gone. The part that's always half a step ahead, working out where a thing is going. All of it, gone. He looked about nineteen years old.

"Come here," he said.

"I'm already here."

"Gregory."

So Blaine kissed me, slowly.

That's all. There wasn't any hurry in it, and there wasn't anything in it he was going to take back later, and I started crying about four seconds in.

He didn't stop and he didn't make anything of it. He kissed the corner of my mouth, and my jaw, and the wet place under my eye, and then he came back to my mouth and stayed there. My hands got into his hair and didn't come out again.

"Don't leave," he said, against my mouth.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Say it again."