Chapter 11
EVIE
The waiter offers us a wine list, and Keegan hands it back without looking at me.
“Sparkling water,” he says. “Lime if you have it.”
He does not make the refusal loud enough to become a message. He does not wait for approval. The waiter takes the leather folder and turns to me.
“Still water.” I slide my menu onto the white cloth. “And I’d like to know why my husband chose a restaurant with candles.”
Keegan surveys the room as if the candles have committed an operational failure. The table is near the front windows, public enough that two diners recognized him on our way in. No private alcove. No anniversary flowers. “They were not in the photographs.”
“You investigated the restaurant?”
“I looked at the website.”
“With your own hands?” The question deserves more skepticism than the website search.
His mouth pulls at one corner. “Jake supervised.”
“Then I assume there were salted peanuts involved.”
“He has a system.” Keegan opens his menu, but his pale eyes remain on me. “You look beautiful.”
I hadn't changed. Same gray sweater, same polishing compound darkening my wrist where the water didn't reach. If he wanted to call that beautiful, the word was doing a lot of work. “Dinner has a limit. Spend it carefully.”
“I am.” His gaze drops to the smear of compound and returns to my face. “Did the Belleroque approve the revised frame?”
The question catches me more cleanly than the compliment. “This afternoon.”
“All three settings?” Keegan closes the menu, abandoning the pretense that he has been reading it.
“The third was the only one affected.” I take a drink to hide how quickly the follow-up pleased me.
“The blue stone?” His thumb stays tucked inside the menu at the page he stopped pretending to study.
I tilt my head. “You retained information for four blocks. Should we alert the medical journals?”
“Tomorrow. Tonight I’m celebrating privately.” Keegan settles back as the waiter approaches, leaving the joke between us instead of performing it for the room.
“You do understand that remembering one stone does not earn you a parade.” I move my glass out of the waiter’s reach before he can refill what I have barely touched.
“Sweetheart, I have won parades for less.” Keegan’s smile flashes, bright enough to remind me why crowds forgive him before he asks.
“And that,” I tell him, lifting my water when it arrives, “is the precise disease.”
Keegan laughs under his breath. He thanks the waiter, asks about an item on the menu, and listens to the answer without checking the room for whoever might be watching him. His phone stays inside his coat. Mine rests in my bag, where I can feel its weight against my ankle.
We order. For several minutes we talk about my work because he keeps asking questions that require real answers.
Which piece sold first at the opening. Whether the inherited stone should remain in its old setting.
Why I prefer platinum for some designs and gold for others.
He gets the materials wrong twice and does not cover the mistake with charm.
“Platinum is denser,” I say, drawing the edge of my napkin beneath one finger. “It moves differently. You can’t bully it into behaving like gold.”
“I would never bully a precious object.” Keegan tests the weight of his sparkling-water glass as though innocence might be measured in ounces.
“Your petition disagrees.”
The humor leaves his face, but he does not retreat into the easy apology. “Fair.”
The waiter sets down our plates. Keegan waits until we are alone again before he asks, “Did you always want the studio?”
“I’ve had it for three years.” I cut into my dinner without looking up.
“That isn’t what I asked.” He waits with his fork untouched, refusing the easy factual answer.
I look at him across the small candle flame. He has learned my trick, or remembered it. “I wanted the work. The studio came later.”
“When?” The single word carries no impatience this time.
“When I realized I was designing everything in the guest room because you kept turning the dining table into a puck-related tactical command center.” I align my knife beside my plate, the same kind of small accommodation I used to make before spreading drawings across our own furniture.
His fork stops. “You said the light was better upstairs.”
“It was. Because I bought the lamp.”
The line settles between us. Keegan lays down the fork with care. “I remember the lamp.”
“Do you?” I expect a broad answer and resent myself for waiting for the details.
“Black arm. Heavy base. You swore at the instructions and built it backward the first time.” He demonstrates the crooked shade with one tilted hand.
I hate the small pleasure that finds me. “The manufacturer labeled the pieces badly.”
“You called the diagram a hate crime against competent women.” His thumb rubs the corner of his folded napkin, but the memory has put warmth back in his face.
“It was inflammatory drafting.” I lift my chin, defending the verdict rather than the lamp.
“I came upstairs because I thought you’d injured yourself.” His smile warms, familiar and dangerous. “You were sitting on the floor with the shade on your lap.”
“One bracket slipped.” The candle flame bends when I release the breath behind the lie.
“You looked like an angry little satellite.” Keegan’s grin turns the restaurant window into reflected gold behind him.
“You slept in the guest room that night.” I point my fork at him, because wanting that smile does not require surrendering the argument.
“I did not.” He catches the accusation on both palms.
“You should have.” I fail to keep my mouth straight.
The laugh escapes us together. It lasts only a few seconds, but the restaurant shifts around it. For those seconds, our marriage is not a case being argued. It is a private language no one else at the table could speak.
Keegan’s hand moves on the cloth and stops halfway between us. He closes it, then reaches for his water instead. “When did you move from wanting the work to wanting the studio?”
I trace condensation down my glass. “The first time a client came to the house and asked whether the room was your hobby space.”
His jaw hardens, not at me. “What did you say?”
“That the hockey memorabilia belonged to my husband and the torches were mine.”
“What did he say?” Keegan’s attention sharpens on the imagined man before the insult has even finished existing.
“She.” I let the correction land. “She asked if you minded me using the room.”
Keegan leans back as if the chair has moved under him. “And I never knew.”
“You weren’t home.” The answer comes flat enough to strip the memory of drama.
“That isn’t an answer.” His fork remains abandoned beside the plate.
“It was ours.” My voice lowers. “For a long time.”
He does not tell me he knows. He looks down at his hands, the hands that hold a stick through three men and make space where none exists. “Did I ever ask what the studio cost?”
“You offered to buy the building.” I watch recognition arrive in the set of his shoulders.
“That sounds like me.” Keegan turns his water glass once against the cloth.
“You were very pleased with yourself.” I remember the black card between his fingers and the certainty that one extravagant offer had completed his part.
“I thought money was support.” He leaves the glass alone. “It was the form that required the least attention from me.”
“Money can be support.” I set my glass down. “But you offered the building before you asked why I wanted one room that was mine.”
His eyes return to mine. “Why did you?”
The question arrives years late and still opens something. I press my thumb against the faint groove where my ring used to sit. “Because I wanted a door people knocked on before entering.”
Keegan goes completely still. Access. Keys. His body in my studio doorway tonight, waiting for permission he once believed marriage supplied forever.
“You should have had that in our house,” he says.
“I should have asked for it sooner.” The old instinct to divide blame rises before I can stop it.
“Don’t split this with me to make it easier to hold.” His voice is deep and quiet. “I took up every room and called the leftover space yours.”
I look toward the window before his face can pull me across the table. Wind presses a scatter of dry leaves along the sidewalk. The candle between us has burned low enough to gutter.
“You’re running out of time,” I say as the waiter passes behind Keegan with a silver tray balanced at one shoulder.
“Then tell me about the bracelet.” He shifts his plate aside, making room on the cloth as if I might lay the design between us.
He means the Belleroque piece, not us. I tell him about the clasp that must disappear beneath the center stone and the safety mechanism requested for display. He remembers I hate visible hinges. When the waiter clears the plates, Keegan declines dessert without turning the decision into sacrifice.
When the agreed hour ends, he places his napkin beside the plate. “That’s the limit.”
“You set an alarm?” I glance toward the coat that has not produced a phone all evening.
“No.” Keegan checks the discreet clock above the bar.
“Then how do you know?” I ask, though the answer is already visible over his shoulder.
“The reservation was at eight.” His mouth pulls sideways. “Despite your opinion, I can count without assistance.”
“Astonishing. Numbers and stones in one evening.” I reach for my bag before the warmth in my voice can become permission to linger.
“I’m peaking.” He pays the bill without making me watch the amount and rises. “May I walk you home?”
I should say no. The wind scratches at the window, and my apartment is four blocks away. His truck is parked around the corner with its umbrella and Jake’s ridiculous peanuts. “Walk. Leave the truck.”
“Yes.” Keegan steps back from my chair rather than treating the answer as permission to touch my coat.
Outside, the wind catches my coat before I fasten it. Keegan removes his heavy wool jacket and settles it around my shoulders without closing his hands on me. The lining holds his heat. It smells faintly of clean soap and the cold night, not whiskey.
“You’re going to freeze,” I say.
“I run hot.” He tucks his hands into his pants pockets, already braced against the cold.
“You run arrogant.” I pull the lapels together beneath my chin; his body heat still lives in the lining.
“That too.” His shoulder brushes the wool around me when the sidewalk narrows, then immediately gives the space back.
We walk close enough that his arm brushes the jacket around me, never my body. He keeps to the street side without announcing it. At my building, he follows me up the outside steps and stops one below the landing, making our eyes level.
“Thank you for dinner,” he says.
I grip the lapels of his coat. “You behaved as if dinner with your wife was a privilege.”
“It was.”
The simple answer heats the air between us. A dark streak of polishing compound remains at my wrist. Keegan notices it and lifts one hand, then waits.
I do not give permission aloud. I hold still.
His calloused thumb touches the inside of my wrist and rubs gently until the mark fades. The contact is small enough to be innocent and intimate enough to wreck me. His hand circles my wrist without closing. I can feel his pulse against the base of my palm.
“Evie.” My name comes out rough.
“Don’t.”
He releases me immediately, but neither of us steps away. His gaze drops to my mouth. Mine catches on the shape of his lower lip, the scruff along his jaw, the memory of exactly how his weight settles above me when he stops holding back.
Keegan bends slowly. Every inch asks. His breath warms my cheek, and my fingers tighten in his coat. Another fraction and years of marriage would know what to do.
He stops.
The restraint shakes through his shoulders. He presses his forehead to mine for one stolen second, then pulls back before I have to save either of us. “Good night.”
I cannot make my voice work. He steps down, leaving me wrapped in his jacket, and walks toward the street without looking back.
By the time I unlock my apartment, the wool has gone cold at the edges. The inside still holds his scent.