Page 70 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“Stay,” I say.

She nods. “Just... don’t go far.”

I press a kiss to her temple, her cheek, her mouth. “I’m right here.”

I return to the kitchen, wipe down the table with a damp cloth. The steel gleams under the low light. I don’t think about tomorrow. Or Monica. Or Jason and Rebecca.

I think about the way Harper looked at me. The way she said my name.

I think about the future.

But not now.

Now, I go back to her. Sit beside the cot. Watch her sleep.

And know—know—that this is real. That she is. That we are.

25

KILLIAN

The midsummer prep meeting wraps at half past four and I wait for the room to clear.

Mallory is the last one out. She pulls the conference room door behind her and I fall into step beside Harper in the corridor without saying anything, and she glances at me once but doesn't ask. She's learned to read when I have something to say and am choosing the right place for it.

We pass three members of the event staff on the way to my office. Two of them clock us together and look away with the professional incuriosity of people who know better than to make anything of what their employer does. The third, Marco, gives me a very deliberate non-expression that tells me he's noticed and catalogued it and will be discussing it with no one.

I don't adjust my pace. I don't create distance between us.

She's mine and I'm not performing otherwise for the benefit of anyone in this building.

I open my office door and she goes in ahead of me and I close it behind us.

She takes the couch the way she always takes it when she's in here, settling into the far end with her tablet against her knee, the unconscious posture of someone who's been in this room enough times to have a usual spot. I look at her for a moment and then I sit down at the other end and extend one leg along the cushion, my back against the armrest, and I look at her.

“Come here,” I say.

She looks at me. At the length of my leg along the couch. At the space I've made.

Then she moves. She turns and settles back against my chest, her back to my front, and I wrap one arm across her and pull her in and feel the small involuntary exhale she makes when she lets herself relax into me. Like she's been waiting to put something down and needed permission.

I press my lips to the curve below her ear. Her skin is warm and she tilts her head slightly without thinking about it, the way she does.

I move both hands to her shoulders and start working them slowly, my thumbs pressing into the muscle at the base of her neck, and she makes a low sound and drops her head forward.

“You've been carrying this in your shoulders all day,” I say.

“I carry everything in my shoulders,” she says into her chest. “It's where things go.”

I keep working. She lets me. The office is quiet around us, the late afternoon light coming in low through the south-facing window, the vineyard going gold at the edges.

I wait until her breathing has slowed and the tension under my hands has dropped by half before I speak again.

“New York,” I say. “The real version.”

Her shoulders tighten slightly under my hands. I don't stop.

“You've heard two versions,” she says.