Chapter 8 The Grand Gesture #2
“I said some harsh things.”
“You said true things. There’s a difference.”
“I told you I couldn’t be your maybe.”
“You can’t. I don’t want you to be.” I squeezed his hand. “I want you to be my yes. My only yes. If you’ll have me.”
Something shifted in his expression. The walls he’d built—the careful, guarded grief he’d been carrying for two years—cracked. Just a little. Just enough to let something else through.
“I’m not easy,” he said. “I’m grumpy. I’m set in my ways. I’ll probably complain about everything and make tea at inappropriate times.”
“I’m terrified. I’ll probably panic at least once a week and need you to talk me down.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It absolutely will be.”
He pulled me closer. Close enough that I could see the grey in his hair, the lines around his eyes, the slight tremor in his hands.
“I can work with exhausting,” he said. “As long as you keep choosing.”
“Every day,” I promised. “As many times as it takes.”
And then he kissed me.
Not tentative. Not questioning. Certain. Deliberate. The kiss of a man who had decided something and was committing to it completely.
His hands came up to frame my face, gentle and sure. I grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him closer, kissed him back with everything I had—all the fear I’d been carrying and all the courage I’d finally found.
When we pulled apart, we were both breathing hard.
“That was—” I started.
“Yes.”
“I mean, really—”
“I know.”
We stood there, foreheads touching, his hands still on my face, my fingers twisted in his shirt. Around us, the street was quiet. My phone was silent. No buzzing, no matches, no chaos.
Just us. Just this.
The radio inside the shop crackled to life. Something slow and sweet—not Barry Manilow, but close. The kind of song that was clearly making a point.
“The radio is editorializing,” I said.
“It does that.”
“I think it approves.”
“It has opinions.” He pulled back just enough to look at me. Really look. “Come inside. I’ll make tea.”
“Two sugars?”
“And a splash of milk. Obviously.” He took my hand and led me toward the door. “Fair warning—the shop is a mess. I haven’t been able to focus on anything for two days.”
“Because of me?”
“Because of you.” He said it simply, without accusation. Just fact.
I followed him into the shop—past the grandfather clock, past the cabinet of curiosities, past all the objects that hummed with decades of collected magic. The velvet armchair was still there, positioned near the window where the morning light was best.
He hadn’t moved it. Even when he thought I wasn’t coming back.
“You kept my chair,” I said.
“It’s not your chair. It’s a chair that happens to be where you sit.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It’s absolutely not the same thing.”
But he was smiling. A real smile, the kind that transformed his whole face and made him look like someone who remembered how to hope.
The radio shifted to something jazzier. Celebratory, almost.
“Now it’s showing off,” Marcus muttered.
“I think it’s happy.”
“Radios don’t have emotions.”
“This one does. You’ve said so yourself—it has opinions about jazz.”
“Having opinions isn’t the same as having emotions.”
“Isn’t it?”
He looked at me. Really looked, the way he had that first day when I’d burst into his shop fleeing my possessed phone. Except now there was something different in his expression. Something warm.
“You’re going to be difficult, aren’t you,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“Probably. Is that a problem?”
“No.” He moved toward the back of the shop, toward the kettle. “I’ve had enough quiet. I think I can handle some difficulty.”
I sat in my chair—my chair, no matter what he said—and watched him make tea. Watched the careful way he measured the leaves, the precise way he poured the water. Everything about Marcus was deliberate. Considered. The opposite of my chaotic, spinning, option-hoarding approach to life.
Maybe that’s why we worked. Maybe that’s why the magic had connected us in the first place.
Or maybe it didn’t matter why. Maybe what mattered was that we were here, now, choosing each other.
He brought me my tea. Two sugars, splash of milk. Exactly right.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“Now?” He settled into the chair across from me—Sarah’s chair, I realized, or maybe just the chair that happened to be where she used to sit. “Now we figure it out. Day by day. Choice by choice.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It is.” He took a sip of his tea. “But I’ve been told that’s how you know it matters.”
I laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of me by the callback to Cassie’s words.
“It matters,” I said. “You matter.”
“So do you.” He reached over, took my hand. “Even when you’re being difficult.”
“Especially when I’m being difficult.”
“That’s debatable.”
But he was smiling. And so was I. And the radio was playing something soft and sweet, and the morning light was streaming through the windows, and for the first time in five years, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Not running. Not spinning. Not keeping my options open.
Just here. With him. Choosing this.
It was the scariest thing I’d ever done.
It was also, somehow, the easiest.