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He puts the fork down.

“Okay,” he says. “Tonight you don’t work the bar. That’s not me. That’s the sheet from the hospital. No lifting, nothing strenuous, somebody with you. You can sit at the end of the bar and tell Kit what she’s doing wrong.”

“She never does anything wrong.”

“Then you can tell her that.”

“And after tonight?”

“After Odette clears you, you go back on the schedule.” He turns his coffee cup once. “I’ll walk through the Club with you before your shift. We’ll make sure everything’s safe.”

“Deal.”

Tav’s place is on the main floor of the Club, behind the loading dock.

I didn’t know it was there. You go out past the dish pit and the walk-in, through the dock where Odette put the oxygen mask on me last night, and there’s a big wooden sliding door at the far end with a padlock hasp and no padlock. Tav slides it open with one hand.

“This was the freight room,” he says. “Back when they brought everything in by wagon. The horses came in here.”

It’s one huge room with a ceiling at least twenty feet up, crossed with old wooden beams, and big windows high on the wall that let in long squares of afternoon sun. The floor is wide old planks, worn smooth. Everything in here is Tav-sized. The doorway to the bathroom is nine feet tall. The couch is long and deep and covered in a faded green quilt. The bed in the far corner is on a low wooden frame that’s clearly handmade, with four posts as thick as my waist.

But it doesn’t look like the reinforced suite. It looks like somebody lives here.

There’s a workbench under the windows, with tools hung on a pegboard above it in neat rows, every tool with its outline traced around it in marker so you’d know if one was missing. There’s a record player on a crate by the couch and a shelf of records under it, mostly country, mostly old. There are jars lined up on a high shelf in the kitchen corner, jam and honey with handwritten labels. Sauvie, blackberry, 2024. Sauvie, lavender honey. There’s a big potted fig tree by the window that’s taller than me.

And on the workbench, there’s a small wooden step stool. Half finished. Two steps. The wood’s been sanded smooth, and there’s a pencil line where the top step will go.

“What’s this?”

“Nothing,” Tav says.

“It’s a step stool.” I glance up at the high shelf with the jars. “Tav. Is this for me?”

“You can’t reach anything in here,” he says. “You can’t reach anything at the Club, either. I watched you climb the speed rack Friday to get the Bénédictine.”

“You’re building me furniture.”

“It’s a stool, Boss. Don’t get emotional.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I started it last week.”

I run my hand over the top step. It’s sanded completely smooth.

“Last week,” I say. “Before the freezer or after?”

“After the freezer,” he says. “Before the troll wedding.”

I turn around. He’s standing in the middle of his own room, enormous, with the sun from the high windows coming down on his horns, looking at the stool instead of me.

“You said soon,” I say.

His ears come up.

He doesn’t move right away. He looks at my knees, and my palms.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m bruised. That’s not the same thing.” I walk over to him. Up close, I have to tip my head all the way back. “Odette checked me at three and Merek checked me every hour after that and my head doesn’t hurt. Nobody said I can’t kiss anybody. It’s not on the sheet.”

“I read the sheet,” Tav says. “It’s not on the sheet.”