I kiss him. Not carefully. Not managing the bruise or the angles or any of the logistics of two people in a narrow bed in a room above a bar. I just kiss him with everything. The fear and the gratitude and the salt on my lips and the bone-deep exhaustion and the wild, reckless hope that maybe, maybe, this is the place where being honest doesn't cost me everything.
"I love you," I say against his mouth.
"I love you too."
"I'm going to mess up."
"I know. Me too."
"But I'm going to try."
"That's enough."
"Is it?"
"Dev." He pulls back. Holds my face in his hands, gently, the bruise side cupped so softly I barely feel the pressure. "You tried to cook me cacio e pepe in a kitchen you'd never used. You threw a punch for a girl to protect her. You sent me a pin drop to a laundromat because I asked where you were even though every instinct told you to lie. You are already trying. Every day. I see it."
The dark settles around us. His hands on my face. My hands on his chest. The narrow bed, the shared blanket, the bar breathing below us.
"Not long now," I say. "Until the apartment."
"Not long."
"And then the apartment."
"And then the apartment."
"But I want to see the bookshelves."
"When they're built. Four months."
"I want to see the drawings. The blueprints. I want to see what you asked for."
"Tomorrow. Knox has them in the garage."
"And Silas?"
"Yeah?"
"The reading nook. The window seat."
"What about it?"
"Make it big enough for two people."
His arms tighten around me. His lion, I can feel it sometimes, the vibration underneath his skin, the low frequency of something old and powerful, settles into the deepest quiet.
"Already is," he says.
We're quiet for a moment. His arms around me. The bookshelves between us like a promise made of wood and window seats. And then I'm kissing him again. Not the desperate crash from before, but something slower. Intentional. The kind of kiss that knows where it's going and isn't in a rush to get there.
"Dev," he murmurs against my mouth. "We don't have to —"
"I know we don't have to." I pull back enough to look at him. "I want to. Not because I need to forget something or prove something. Because I want you. And for the first time, I don't have anything to hide while it happens."
His eyes search mine. Whatever he finds makes his breath catch.
"No editing?" he asks.