22. Jade
JADE
Imake the decision in the barrel room.
That's all. Just: tonight.
I cap the sample. Put the pen down. Go up.
Dinner is the four of us. Afterward Cormac goes to the study and Killian goes to the winery—something about the east row temperature, something that needs checking, the work that doesn't stop—and Ryan does the dishes.
I dry them. We don't say much. The kitchen is quiet.
The last of the evening light is going. His hands are careful in the water the same way they're careful with everything lately, and I watch them and I think: yes. Tonight.
When the dishes are done he hangs the towel and says good night. He's walking toward the stairs.
"Ryan."
He stops.
Turns.
I cross the kitchen to him. I'm not sure what my face is doing and I'm not sure it matters. I stop in front of him close enough that I have to look up slightly—he's taller than I remember him being, or I've stopped doing the thing where I keep distance between us so I can pretend I haven't noticed.
"You know what the difference is?" I say. "Between you and them?"
He waits.
"Your father made coffee and had the guest room made up before I knocked. Killian sat at that table for two years wanting me and never once made me feel like I was taking up too much space." I hold his eye. "You could learn a few things from them."
I watch it land. It lands exactly where I meant it to—I can see it in his jaw, the way it tightens, the way his eyes go briefly somewhere else before he brings them back to me.
He doesn't look away. He doesn't defend himself.
He just takes it, the same way he's been taking everything this week, and I feel a small mean satisfaction at that and I'm not going to pretend I don't.
A beat.
"You're right," he says. His voice is steady.
Quiet. "I know you're right." He swallows once.
"I'll do anything, Jade. Whatever it takes.
Whatever you need from me, however long—I'll do it.
I want to make you happy. I want to show you I know how now.
" His eyes don't move from mine. "I know I didn't before.
I know that's on me. But I'm not that person anymore and I'm going to spend as long as you'll let me proving it. "
I look at him.
His jaw is still working. He meant every word and it cost him something to say them and he said them anyway.
"I'm not ready to give you everything," I say. "You still have to wait."
His hands are at his sides. "I know."
"But I wanted you to know that when I'm ready, I'm going to be ready."
I lean up and I kiss him.
His mouth is warm and he doesn't move for one beat—held, careful, the effort of it visible in his shoulders—and then he kisses me back.
Slow. Both hands coming up to my face the way he used to touch things he was afraid of breaking, and he kisses me like he's memorizing it, like he's not sure he'll get another one and he wants to know this one completely.
I let him.
He tastes like the wine from dinner and his hands are shaking slightly—just slightly, just enough that I feel it against my jaw—and when I pull back he doesn't chase it. He lets me go. He stands there with his hands still raised where my face was and looks at me.
"Jade." His voice is wrecked. Just my name.
"I know," I say again.
I step back. I smooth my shirt. I go up the stairs.
I lie in the guest room and I look at the ceiling and I think: that's the right thing.
That's the right order. He needed to know the wall is down without me handing him everything at once.
He needed something real to hold onto that wasn't the porch and wasn't patience—something that told him the waiting is finite, that the waiting has a shape he can see the edges of.
He's been doing everything right for seven days.
That's enough for a kiss.
Not enough for more. Not yet. But my body knows him—I've spent two years in rooms with him, two years of Sunday dinners and side glances and the way he takes his coffee and the fact that he knows where every loose screw in this house is without anyone having to tell him.
I'm not starting from nothing. I never was.
The door at the end of the hall is Killian's. The light under it is on.
I lie still and I think about going down the hall. About how easy it would be. How certain the warmth of it. I can still feel Cormac from this morning—the warmth of nothing between us, his cum and my body keeping it. I've spent two weeks learning what that feels like. I want Ryan to know.
I don't go.
I stay in the guest room with the ceiling and the dark and the feeling of having done one right thing in the right order, which turns out to be its own kind of warmth.
In the morning Ryan is up before anyone.
He makes coffee. He has it ready when I come down—my mug on the counter, the coffee fresh, nothing said about it and nothing said about last night.
He's already got his boots on. He looks at me once when I come in, a single look, and I can see the whole of what he's holding in it—the kiss, the I know, the not yet but yes.
Then he nods. Picks up his jacket. Goes out to the rows.
I stand in the kitchen with my coffee and the morning coming through the window and I think: that's him. That's the man who's been here the whole time, underneath everything I was too careful to look at.
I drink my coffee.
I go to the fourth chair.