Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
TORI
I wake to sunlight spilling across a bed that doesn’t belong to me and yet feels, somehow, like the safest place I’ve ever been.
The sheets smell like detergent and Leo, faintly crisp and warm, and the pillow beside me is still dented from his head.
For a long time I just lie there, staring at the ceiling, letting my own breath rise and fall.
I used to start every morning with a weight in my chest. A running tally of how I’d bend myself that day—what tone to take, what edges to soften, how much of myself I could risk showing without breaking something fragile.
That’s gone now.
The absence is almost startling.
My body is my own. My choices are mine.
I am mine.
That’s what so many people couldn’t—wouldn’t—understand: leaving wasn’t about choosing someone else. It wasn’t even about ending a marriage.
It was about stepping into myself. Finding the woman I’d buried under years of silence and compromise and shame.
She’s here now. Awake. Breathing. Whole.
And because I know I’m whole, I can choose love without fear of losing myself again. I can choose Leo—not because I need him to fill the empty spaces (those belong to me now) but because life is so much brighter, so much richer, with him in it.
I roll toward the nightstand and find the note propped against the lamp.
This man and his notes.
GF,
Ran to the store. Don’t panic. Needed sherbet. Figured your tongue probably isn’t ready for bacon and eggs, and I refuse to be the man who serves you a breakfast that hurts. Back soon. Don’t move. Or at least, don’t put any clothes on.
I love you.
BF
P.S. I emailed Dr. Johnson and told him both of us would not be in the office today due to a late-night medical scare involving my neighbor. That is not, technically, a lie.
I snort, pressing the paper to my lips. Sherbet for breakfast, of course. And the P.S.? Only Leo would turn last night’s fiasco into an excuse to miss work.
I slide back beneath the sheets, tucking the note beside me like a talisman. The quiet hums in my chest, steady and certain.
For the first time in forever, I know that I could be fine on my own. But I don’t want to be.
I want this. Him. Us.
The front door clicks. I hear Leo humming—Sinatra, maybe—and a second later, there he is: hair wind-tossed, grocery bag dangling from his hand. He takes one look at me sprawled across his bed, bare skin tangled in his sheets, and his grin curves slow and wicked.
“Hot damn, woman,” he says, voice warm with mischief, “take a look at that ass. The square root of negative one isn’t the only thing that’s unreal.”
I burst out laughing, tossing a pillow at him. He dodges, still grinning like a fool.
“Breakfast of champions, coming right up,” he says, lifting the bag. “Raspberry sherbet. Don’t say I don’t spoil you.”
“Sherbet for breakfast?” I tease, propping myself up on an elbow. “What kind of man are you?”
Leo kicks off his shoes and plops onto the bed next to me, back against the headboard. I adjust my pillows and join him, dragging the comforter along with me.
“The kind who knows better than to give his girlfriend scrambled eggs when her tongue looks like it went twelve rounds with Mike Tyson.”
I roll my eyes, but my chest warms anyway.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And yet,” he says, leaning down to brush a soft kiss against my lips, “you’re still here.”
The kiss lingers in me even after he pulls back—light, certain, grounding.
Last night was just the first night of many, but it felt like a glimpse into something bigger. Not a promise of perfection, but of possibility—of dinners that turn into laughter, of stolen kisses in kitchens, of late nights that spill over into mornings.
And this life, this future, includes so much more than just the two of us.
It’ll be Skye with her unfiltered honesty, Alis with her quick wit and tender heart, Sunny pulling us into plans we never see coming, Dexter posturing himself as the refined one while secretly enjoying the madness.
A whole family of people who remind us that love and joy are multifaceted, and beautiful, and complicated, and real.
Life with Leo will always lean toward the unexpected, a little messy, a little absurd—but as long as we are true to ourselves and surrounded by the people we love, it will never, ever be dull.
And if things ever get too quiet?
Well…Lois has a key.