Page 42 of His Vow

"I have a lot to work through." The words came out without permission. No strategy behind them. "Things I can't explain yet."

She lifted her head. Her eyes found mine. The curl had fallen across her forehead.

"But I'm starting to believe," I said.

"Believe what?"

"That I can be happy again."

THIRTEEN

SOLEIL

I woke to the sound of a knife on a cutting board.

Not the lazy scrape of someone making toast. A rhythm — quick, precise, the blade hitting wood in even intervals. I stretched beneath the dark sheets and blinked at the ceiling.

His apartment was different now. Not dramatically. Not in ways a stranger would catch. But my rosemary plant sat on the windowsill beside his single thyme. My book leaned against his lamp on the nightstand. My burnt sienna scarf hung over the back of the chair where he read case law at midnight. Small things. Living things. Evidence that something in this space had veered to make room for me.

I padded barefoot down the hallway. The kitchen smelled like garlic and butter and something green — herbs, fresh, sharp enough to cut through the richness.

Nolan stood at the counter with his back to me. Black shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder. Two pans on the stove. A cutting board covered in finely diced shallots. It was 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and this man was making a meal that belonged on a restaurant plate.

I hopped onto the counter beside the cutting board. The granite was cold under my bare thighs. I reached across and stole a piece of roasted pepper — warm, sweet.

He didn't turn around. "Don't touch the cutting board."

I took another piece.

His hand caught my wrist. His fingers wrapped around it — loose, warm, his thumb pressing against my pulse. He turned his head. The look he gave me was unhurried, focused, the faintest pull at the corner of his mouth. That ghost. The one I'd been tracking for weeks. This morning, he let it live a beat longer than usual.

"You're a thief," he said.

"You're a really good cook." I popped the pepper into my mouth. "Your fault."

He released my wrist and went back to the shallots. I swung my legs against the cabinet and watched him work — the economy of his movements, the knife rotating in his hand, how he wiped the blade on the towel without breaking rhythm. He plated without fanfare. Two plates. The dish rack that used to hold one of everything now held two.

After breakfast, I pulled a pencil from my bag.

"Sit for me."

He looked at the pencil. Looked at me. "No."

"I wasn't asking." I grabbed a takeout menu from the stack on his counter — the Thai place, the back was blank — and sat cross-legged on the couch. "Sit. Don't move. Five minutes."

He sat. He didn't like it. His jaw was tight, his posture rigid. The discomfort of a man who controlled every version of himself that left the room and was now being asked to hold still while someone studied the original.

I drew fast. The line of his jaw first. Then the set of his shoulders. The hands resting on his thighs, fingers slightly curled, the only part of him that didn't look controlled. His eyes were the hardest. They held things the rest of his face had learned to hide. I traced the shape of them, the depth beneath the brow, and something came through on the paper that stopped my pencil.

Sadness.

I looked at the sketch. Looked at him. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't catalogue — guarded, yes, but underneath it, something reaching toward the surface.

I didn't mention it. I signed the corner and held it up. "Not bad for a takeout menu."

He studied it for a long moment. "You see too much."

I set the sketch on his coffee table and stood. "Come somewhere with me."