Chapter 8 #2
Theo's quiet a moment, the noise of the party rolling behind us.
Then, lower, like it costs him: "She told me something, back when this started.
When she came to the bay to fight me about it.
She said every man I ever approved of treated her like a chess piece, and that you were the first one who ever just stood between her and something without being asked.
" He turns his glass in his hand. "I didn't want to hear it.
She was right, though. I spent thirty years deciding what was good for her, same as our father did, and I never once noticed I was doing the exact thing that made her leave.
You —" he nods at the harbor cover-up just starting to show under my rolled sleeve, the design Freya's already begun, "you ask her.
That's the whole difference. You hand her the choice.
I watched you do it on the dock today, even — you went in for the boat without a thought for yourself, and then you came up and the first thing you did was look for her, to make sure she hadn't seen, to make sure she wasn't scared.
You'd rather she didn't watch you bleed.
" He drains the glass. "That's not a chess move.
That's the real thing. Took me a year of being wrong to admit it. "
"You weren't wrong to protect her."
"I was wrong about how." He sets the glass down. "She's the best thing our family ever made, that girl. The only one of us who got out clean and built something with her own two hands. You'd better know what you're holding."
"I know exactly what I'm holding," I tell him. "I've known since she found the drawings."
Theo studies me one more second. Then something in his face eases, barely, a single brick coming down.
"Welcome to the table, brother," he says, and he claps me on the shoulder — the good side, he aims for the good side, he knows about the ribs — and walks off into the noise.
And then the doors open, and Freya walks in.
She's not supposed to be here — it's a closed ceremony, club only — but Dominic clearly arranged this part too, because nobody stops her, and she crosses the whole length of the clubhouse in front of every Saltwater King with her chin up and her eyes only on me, and she throws her arms around my neck, careful of the ribs because she knows about the ribs, everyone knows about the ribs, and she kisses me.
In front of all of them. Full and certain and unhidden, three weeks of public silence and four months of secret breaking open at once, and the room hollers, and I hold her, and over her shoulder I find Theo across the room.
He's watching.
He doesn't smile. That would be a bridge too far, too fast, and we both know it.
But he doesn't look away either.
And that's enough. That's more than enough.
That's a man choosing, in front of his whole club, to keep his eyes open while his sister kisses the prospect he un-sponsored, and not flinch, and not leave.
It's the same thing I do every time the world hands me something hard.
He's standing still and taking it with his eyes open.
It's the most Katsaros thing I've ever seen, and I love every one of them for it.
We don't make it long at the party.
She drives me back to her place — she insists on driving, fusses over the ribs the whole way, calls me an idiot for going in the water four separate times in the most loving voice I've ever heard — and she gets me up the back stairs and into the apartment, and the second the door shuts behind us the whole night catches up to both of us at once.
The first scene was a secret in a dark studio, slow then desperate, two people stealing something the world hadn't allowed yet.
This is nothing like that. This is the door wide open.
This is free. This is a man with a patch on his back and cracked ribs and the woman who's seen all of it, no hiding left, nothing to steal, everything just ours, out loud, claimed.
And it has to be careful, because of the ribs, and the careful is its own kind of unbearable.
She makes me sit on the edge of the bed. "You don't move," she says, mock-stern, a finger against my chest, right over the bandage wrap. "You hurt yourself being a hero. You don't get to hurt yourself being an idiot too. Tonight I do the work."
"Freya —"
"Hush. Hands behind you. Lean back. Let me."
So I do. I sit back on my palms and I let her, and she takes her time, because patience is the whole skill, I taught her that, no — she taught me that, and now she's using it on me.
She undresses me slow and gentle, easing my shirt up and over with both hands so I don't have to twist, her mouth following the fabric, kissing each new inch of skin she uncovers.
When she reaches the bandage she stops and presses her lips to it, soft, the way I kissed her knife scar that first night, and the tenderness goes through me sharper than the pain ever did.
She straddles my lap careful, her weight kept off my ribs, her arms looping around my neck, and she kisses me deep and slow, in no hurry at all, and I get my good arm around her and pull her in, and the warm weight of her settling against me — chest to chest, her heart going against mine — is the most undone I've ever been by anyone.