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"A room that needed updating." I shift her bag to my other hand. "It should be finished by tomorrow."

She looks at the plastic for another second, curiosity all over her face, but she doesn’t push. Probably because I’m already ten feet ahead of her and clearly not offering more.

Her footsteps slow behind me as I stop in front of the master suite.

My room.

I set her bags down and turn. She’s standing three feet behind me, looking at the door, then at me.

"What do you think," I ask, "about staying with me?"

Her eyes search my face. "For tonight?"

"I was hoping for longer."

"I suppose, this is what we discussed, right?" she asks.

The question hangs there between us.

"Yes, but that was in France, on our honeymoon. This looks different in the light of the French Riviera. Now we’re here and you can change your mind Aria. I’m not going to push you to do anything you’re not ready for."

And I know what the safe answer is. The answer that protects both of us from the thing that started in a pool in Cannes and stopped pretending in an alley in Villefranche.

I don’t give her the safe answer.

Then her face does something I want to memorize and keep—her eyes saying yes before her mouth catches up.

"Okay," she says softly. "For longer."

I nod once.

Open the door.

Carry her bags inside.

And for the first time in my life, the house I built because it made sense doesn’t feel like an asset or a strategy or a place to sleep between meetings.

It feels like a place to build something… with her.

Chapter Twenty-Four

ARIA

I wake up to the sound of water running.

The shower. His shower, in the house that feels different this morning after he carried my bags past the guest room and said for longer.

His side of the bed is empty. The sheets are still warm where he was.

His side of the bed is empty, though it hasn't been for long since the sheets are still warm from him being in them.

I stretch and blink at the ceiling.

This is home. At least for the next year.

The shower is still running, and then I smile at the thought that I should make the most of living with Everett.

Then I get up, strip off the underwear I slept in, and walk naked into the bathroom, steam hitting me as I ever the space.