Chapter 33 - Seraphina #2
"Your sofrito," she says, arranging the platter where I need it. "It's better than Havana Nights. More depth."
From Isa, this is a Nobel Prize. Havana Nights has been Miami's gold standard for twenty years.
"My abuela worked there in the eighties."
Isa nods once, then moves to the sink and washes her hands. She dries them on my towel, picks up a serving spoon, and starts transferring rice to a bowl like we do this every Sunday.
We work in quiet synchronization. She knows. I know. Her acceptance of me doesn't need words. A quiet warmth settles in my chest.
When we've loaded everything onto platters and bowls, she picks up one side of the pernil tray.
I take the other. The skin crackles as we lift it, crispy and golden, the meat beneath so tender it's already starting to separate.
Steam rises, carrying garlic and citrus.
We carry it out together, and conversation pauses as the aroma hits the room.
The table has been extended past its usual boundaries, mismatched chairs pulled from other rooms. We squeeze in, elbows bumping, knees knocking, nobody complaining because proximity is the point.
Adrian pours wine into whatever glass is closest, Marisol tells a story about Chicago that has Nico covering his face, Logan listens with that stillness that means he's memorizing everything.
I'm not watching from the outside anymore. Not checking exits or calculating threats. I'm inside the conversation, laughing when Adrian mimics the health inspector's terrified clipboard fumbling, passing dishes without thinking about the choreography.
Gabriel's hand finds mine under the table. Not desperate, not claiming, just there. His thumb brushes my knuckles once, then his fingers interlace with mine and stay.
The Siren starts humming as Marisol reaches the punchline of her story. The sound weaves through our laughter, becoming part of the room's texture.
The wooden spoon rests in the kitchen where I left it, propped against the wall beside the stove. My hands are full of other things now. Gabriel's fingers between mine, the heat of Marisol's demanding inclusion, the certainty that next Sunday we'll do this again.
I notice Logan once, briefly. Present in the laughter, generous with the wine, and somehow still separate from the comfort he's helped build. Standing just outside the circle of light, watching the rest of us be family.
My hand stays near the middle of the table, not reaching for my purse by the wall. My body faces the conversation instead of angling toward the door. The exit mapping that used to run constant has gone quiet.
The conversation flows in four directions at once, stories overlapping, Nico trying to explain why checking the inspector's car's license plate was reasonable, Marisol stealing food from his plate while he talks, the Siren harmonizing with herself somehow.
This is what staying looks like. Not grand gestures. Just showing up every Sunday to the same table with the same people until belonging isn't a question anymore, just a fact. Like breathing. Like the wooden spoon against the kitchen wall.
Like Gabriel's hand in mine.
After dinner, when the others have gone, Gabriel and I stand at the sink, washing the biggest pans in comfortable silence. We've fallen into a rhythm—I wash, he dries—our movements synchronized without discussion. His shoulder brushes mine occasionally, each touch a quiet affirmation.
"You survived Marisol," he says, taking a plate from my hands.
"Was there ever any doubt?" I glance up at him, catching the slight curve of his lips.
"Not from me." He sets the dried plate in the stack. "But I've seen her reduce grown men to stammering messes."
The kitchen feels different now, marked by laughter and stories, no longer just a place where I cook to prove my worth. The wooden spoon still rests against the wall, but it's not my only anchor anymore.
Gabriel takes my wet hands in his, turning me to face him. Water drips between us, darkening spots on his shirt. He doesn't seem to care.
"Move in with me," he says, the words simple but carrying weight. "Not because it's safer or more convenient. Because I want to wake up with you every morning."
I look at his face—the face that terrifies others, that has witnessed and caused so much violence—and see only home.
"I already live here," I say, smiling.
"Not officially." His fingers trace my cheek. "I want it to be real. Permanent."
The word hangs between us, a promise neither of us thought we'd ever make again. Permanent. Not temporary shelter or strategic alliance. Something built to last.
I reach up and touch the spot where his collar once sat, bare skin now, warm under my fingers.
He catches my hand before I can lower it, presses it flat against his throat — that exposed place, the one that's been uncovered since the night I set the collar down on the pew. His pulse beats steady under my palm.
Outside, Miami does what Miami does — music from somewhere, a horn on the causeway, the city's permanent argument with silence.
But in here the air is warm and smells like garlic and the last of the wine, and the wooden spoon rests against the wall where I left it, and his pulse is steady under my hand, and none of the exits are mapped.
This is what I was running toward, it turns out. Not away from anything. Toward this kitchen, these hands, this particular heartbeat. I just had to get rid of everything else first to see it.
"Move in with me officially," he says again, low, his thumb tracing my wrist.
"I'll think about it," I say, which means yes, which he knows means yes, which is why he smiles — slowly, the way he does everything, the smile that still surprises me every time because it transforms his whole face into something that was always there underneath.
The smile is still on his face when I slip out of his arms.
"Where are you—"
"Stay there."
The bedroom is upstairs in our suite. I don't turn on the light — I know this space now, the exact geography of it, which is its own kind of permanence.
The nightstand drawer opens quietly. I find the collar by touch: soft fabric worn thin at the edges, lighter than it should be for something that carried eight years of weight.
When I come back to the kitchen doorway he's exactly where I left him, arms crossed, watching me with the expression I've learned to read. Not the Delgado face. Not the priest face. Just his face — the one that was underneath the whole time.
His eyes drop to my hand.
Come back up.
"Sera." One word. Low. The whole question in two syllables.
He doesn't move. Doesn't reach for it, doesn't stop me. Just watches with those dark eyes, completely still in the way he gets when he's made a choice and is waiting for the world to catch up.
I cross the kitchen. Stop in front of him.
I reach up. He tilts his chin — just slightly, just enough — and I fasten the collar around my own throat.
I've been thinking about intimacy wrong my whole life — as transaction, as performance, as the relief of being chosen.
What I understand now, standing here with this collar around my neck and this man in front of me, is that this is something else entirely.
This is everything. The priest and the prince and the killer and the man who tracked down my grandmother's handwriting and couldn't figure out the toaster. Nothing held back.
"Bless me, Father," I say, a small smile on my lips. Not a confession. An offering.
Something moves across his face. Then his hands find my hips and pull me in.
His teeth graze my neck, then tug on the collar, and the sound that escapes his lips sounds like blasphemy and a hymn.