Page 28 of Give In

It was all the permission I needed. Now, I’ve just been waiting for the right moment to pull my girl into my arms and tell her how I feel.

Through all of it I am aware of Clover the way you’re aware of weather. The specific quality of the air when she’s nearby. The sound of her laugh from across the room. The way she moves through the space, stopping to talk to people, head thrown back at something Emma says, hand on Juniper’s arm, completely at home in a room full of people she met forty-eight hours ago.

She has not looked at me since the ceremony.

I think she is being very deliberate about this.

The band shifts into something slower as the dancing gets properly underway, and I watch Leo pull Juniper onto the floor, and Graham find Lizzie. Bram extends a hand to Emma with an earnest expression of a man who knows he married up and intends to keep earning it. James and Rebecca are already dancing.

This is the right time.

I cross the room.

Clover is standing at the edge of the dance floor with a glass of champagne, watching the dancers with a soft expression. She’s been crying on and off since the vows, the productive kind of crying that happy people do at weddings, and her eyes are still slightly bright with the evidence of it. She doesn’t see me until I’m beside her.

“Dance with me,” I say.

She looks up at me. “That’s not a question.”

“No,” I agree. “It’s not.”

Something moves across her face that I’m learning to read. The thing she does when she’s deciding between what she wants and what she thinks she should want, and the wanting is winning. I watch it win.

She takes my hand.

I lead her onto the floor and pull her in, and she comes without resistance, settling against me like she did on the couch that first night. That same quality of rightness locks into place. Her hand is in mine. My other hand is at the small of her back. We are very close.

She tips her head back to look at me. “Your speech was incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“I cried.”

“I noticed.”

“I cry at everything,” she says. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“You cried at the vows, too.”

“Everyone cried at the vows.”

“Probably not KiKi,” I say.

Clover snort laughs. “The fillers injected into her face might prevent such things.”

Then it’s my turn to laugh.

We turn slowly with the music, and I am in no hurry. I have been in no hurry since I decided, somewhere over the Atlantic, that this woman was worth taking time over.

“I heard you had an interesting morning,” I say.

Her eyes flick up to mine. “Graham.”

“Graham. Via Emma. Via Bram.”

She considers this. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know that Kiki came to the bridal suite to start some drama, and that you handled it.” I look at her face. “Are you alright?”