The ceiling moves with the pool light.
Memphis is still at the door.
Lying there, I wait for what I am supposed to feel, the guilt, the grief, the weight of everything this means, and what arrives instead is simply this…
Warm.
Right.
“Hey,” Tate says quietly into my hair.
“Hey,” I say back.
A beat of quiet between us.
“You okay?” he asks.
Thinking about it honestly, the way I always try to, even when the honest answer is complicated. “Yeah,” I say. “I am.”
He is quiet for a moment, his hand moves slowly in my hair, absent, unthinking, the ease of a man who has stopped being careful.
“Me too,” he says.
The desert outside is beginning to lighten, that pale shift from dark to almost day, the sky going from black to deep gray blue at the edges. Lying against his chest, I watch it through the glass doors and try not to name what this is, what comes next, or what any of it means beyond this moment.
This moment is enough.
More than enough.
This moment iseverything.
Chapter Twenty-Six
TATE
My eyes open to the sunlight cascading through the window.
Not the pale early light of the previous morning, but the full, warm gold of a Nevada morning that has been awake for a while without me, lying across the bed in long bright rectangles that Memphis has already positioned himself in with the dedication of a dog who takes sunbathing seriously.
Sophia is still asleep beside me.
The morning light crosses her face, her hair is loose on the pillow, one hand resting between us, open and still. The careful composure she wears when she is awake is completely gone.
Just her.
Just this.
And she is beautiful.
I watch her a moment longer than necessary before I slowly get up so as not to disturb her and go make coffee.
Memphis finds me in the kitchen and sits at my feet with the patient dignity of a dog who understands that breakfast happens on my schedule. I feed him, make coffee, then stand at the window looking out at the desert. The mountains are sharp against a vast, clear sky, and the pool catches the first gold of the morning.
I stand at the window and think about her.
Not with the careful distance applied for months, but directly and honestly.
The way she looked up last night.