42. Buzz #2
Alois had, in fact, cried over a baby hat.
He had done it silently and with the terrifying dignity of a man who could still rearrange someone’s skeleton if needed, but tears were tears.
Bea had pretended not to see them. Ezra had definitely seen them.
Stella had probably smelled them from two floors away and was already turning the moment into a human interest piece.
Lucy settled again, her hands sliding from my neck to my chest.
“Have you talked to Bea today?” I asked.
“Briefly. She sent a picture of Lena making the angriest newborn face I have ever seen.”
“That kid has Alois’s glare.”
“And Bea’s sense of timing.”
“Dangerous combination.”
“Very.” Her smile softened. “She sounded tired. But happy.”
I brushed my thumb along her side. “You happy?”
Lucy looked up at me. Her hands stilled against my chest. Outside, thunder moved farther across the lake, lower now, like the storm was getting tired. “Yes,” she said. “I’m happy.”
We carried wine into the living room. Dottie had claimed the rug in front of the fire, her belly turned toward the heat, paws twitching in a dream. Lucy curled into the corner of the couch with her legs tucked beneath her. I sat beside her, close enough that her knee rested against my thigh.
The lake was nearly invisible beyond the windows, but I knew it was there. I knew the dock was slick with rain. I knew the water was dark, restless, alive under the storm. I knew the morning would come silver and damp, with puddles on the boards and pine needles stuck to everything.
I had bought this house because of the view. That was what I told people, anyway.
I liked the way the lake opened behind it. I liked the dock. I liked that the house sat back from the road and gave me space from the noise that followed a season, a game, a bad headline.
But the truth was, I had bought it because it felt like a place a life could happen.
I had not known what life. I had not let myself picture too much.
A couch. A kitchen. A dock. A guest room nobody used for guests. Firelight in August because the woman beside me loved it.
Lucy leaned her head on my shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”
“The house.”
“What about it?”
“It’s better when you’re here,” I said.
Lucy’s fingers tightened around her glass.
I felt her take a breath. She looked toward the windows, where the rain had turned the glass into a moving wall. “It already feels like home to me.”
The words landed so gently I almost missed how much they changed.
Lucy kept looking at the storm. “I know that’s probably a lot.”
“It’s exactly enough.”
She turned her face toward me then, and I knew she had heard everything I had not said yet. Lucy had always been good at that. Hearing the words under the words. Seeing the shape of a thing before I had figured out how to hold it in my hands.
I set my wine on the coffee table.
Lucy’s gaze dropped to my hand, then came back to my face.
The fire cracked softly. Dottie huffed in her sleep. The storm kept the rest of the world out.
I had spent so much of my life wanting more from Lucy and being terrified that wanting made me dangerous to her peace. Wanting her attention. Her forgiveness. Her trust. Her mornings. Her hand in mine where people could see. Her place beside me at the end of the day.
For years, I had thought the second chance was the impossible part.
It wasn’t.
The impossible part was learning what to do with it once I had it.
How to stand there with both hands open.
How to love her without trying to outrun the fear that I might lose her.
How to trust that I did not have to earn every breath she took beside me until I collapsed from the effort.
She had chosen me.
Again and again, in all the small ways that mattered most.
She had chosen coffee.
She had chosen the dock.
She had chosen dinner at my table.
She had chosen my terrible cabinet system and my dead basil plant and a dog towel by the door.
She had chosen me with an overnight bag.
“Lucy.” I reached for her hand. “Move in with me.”
Lucy did not blink. She did not ask if I was sure. She looked at me like she had been waiting for me to catch up.
Then she smiled, small and crooked and so perfectly her that it made my chest ache. “Okay.”
I stared at her.
She laughed once. “What?”
“That was fast.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“And I answered.”
“You don’t want to think about it?”
“I have been thinking about it.”
My breath left me in a rough, quiet sound.
Lucy shifted closer, setting her glass beside mine. “Ty, half of Dottie’s worldly possessions are already here.”
“That dog has more possessions than I do.”
“She is a woman of taste.”
“She eats leaves.” I laughed, and she smiled wider, but there were tears gathered along her lashes now. She did not let them fall. She just looked at me through them, brave and open and not hiding from the size of the moment.
“And most of my stuff is still in boxes anyway,” she added. A yes wrapped in humor because otherwise it would be too much to touch directly.
I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles. “That’s your official answer?”
“Yes.”
“Because I can accept something more formal. We could get paperwork. Maybe have Dottie notarize it.”
“Dottie would charge snacks.”
“She’s ruthless.”
“She learned from Naomi.”
I smiled, but my throat had gone tight.