Page 43 of His Vow

My apartment was fifteen minutes by cab. I let us in and walked past the kitchen, past the living room, into the room I used as a studio. It was small. One window. The afternoon light fell through the glass in a warm rectangle across the hardwood. Canvases leaned against every wall, face turned away.

I stood in the doorway. My pulse was in my throat.

"These are the ones I don't show," I said. "I've never let anyone in here."

He moved past me. Turned the first canvas. A garden — not mine, my mother's. The rosemary climbing to the windowsill. He looked at it for a long time. Set it down. Turned the next.

He stopped at a figure sitting in an empty room. No face. Just the posture — the curve of the spine, the hands in the lap, the weight of a body holding something too heavy for too long. The light in the painting came from a window that wasn't visible.

He stood in front of it without speaking. I was barely breathing.

"The light source is outside the frame," he said. "You can't see where it's coming from, but the figure is turned toward it. She's not reaching for it. She's not moving toward it. She's just sitting with the knowledge that it's there." He traced the air in front of the canvas. "That's what makes it honest. She's not pretending the room isn't dark. She's choosing to face the window."

My exhale shook. I pressed my fingers to my mouth and held them there until the trembling stopped.

He was standing in the most private part of my life. And he had just told me — in specific, precise, real terms — exactly what I'd been trying to paint.

He turned from the canvas. His eyes found mine.

I kissed him first.

My hands on his face, pulling him down. He caught my waist and I walked him backward toward the bed, pulling his shirt free, my fingers finding warm skin. He lowered me onto the sheets and I pulled him down with me. No urgency. No collision.

His mouth moved from mine to my collarbone, tracing a slow path down while my fingers worked the buttons of his shirt. I pushed the fabric off his shoulders and traced the scar on his left side — old, faded — with my thumb.

He watched my face while I touched it, and the openness in his eyes undid me more than any kiss.

He undressed me slowly. His hands moved down my body with the patience of someone unwrapping something precious, his mouth following — my ribs, the dip of my waist where I shivered.

I held his face.

My eyes stayed open, so did his. We looked at each other while he moved inside me and the looking was the most naked thing I'd ever done — more than the skin, more than the sounds. His forehead pressed to mine. My fingers in his hair. His name in my mouth like a sound I'd invented, stretched thin until it was only breath, only heat. Until it was only the two of us in a room full of paintings I'd never shown anyone and afternoon light that wouldn't last.

We lay tangled in my sheets. His arm across my waist, his thumb moving in absent circles on my hip. The light had shifted — warmer and golden. My head was on his chest. His heartbeat under my ear was slow and steady.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Daddy.

"Hi."

"Sol, I had Catherine reach out to the Whitfield Foundation! They have a new arts funding initiative, and I thought it would be perfect for the gallery. She's arranged an introduction for next week."

My hand stilled on Nolan's chest. An introduction arranged without asking. A door opened I hadn't requested.

"I appreciate that, Daddy. But I've got it. I'm handling the funding myself."

A pause. "Of course you are. I just thought — "

"I know. And thank you. But I've got it."

"Alright, sweetheart."

I hung up. A small clearing. A tiny space I'd made for myself. The air inside it was mine.

I dialed Rhys. He picked up on the fourth ring.

"Little one." His voice was loose. Not relaxed — unmoored. The consonants sliding into each other.

"Hey. I've been trying to reach you."