Page 152 of Suite 7

I let him.

When he comes back and sits beside me, we’re quiet for a long moment.

“She asked if it’s love,” he says finally.

“Yeah.”

“And we couldn’t answer her.”

“No.”

He sets his mug down. Turns to face me.

“I couldn’t say it like that,” he says. “Pressured. Defensive. As proof. It would have been using it wrong.”

“I know. I felt it too.”

“But I need to say it now.” He reaches for my hand. “Not for her. Not as an argument. Just because it’s true and I’ve been waiting for the right moment and I’m done waiting.” His thumb strokes across my knuckles. “I kept waiting. For the perfect time. The perfect setting. Clean air and no complications. And all the waiting did was make everything worse.” He meets my eyes. “I’m not waiting anymore.”

My throat is tight.

“I’m in love with you.” The words come out steady. Certain. “Not falling. In love. Completely and terrifyingly in love with you and I should have said it before today. I should have said it on a Tuesday for no reason, in your kitchen, without cardamom rolls on my floor and my sister’s grief between us. But I’m saying it now because it’s true and I’m done waiting for clean air.”

The tears come before I can stop them.

“Say it again,” I whisper.

“I’m in love with you, Vera Beckett.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

I press my free hand to his chest, his heart hammering under my palm. “I love you too.”

He kisses me. Desperate and clinging.

When we break apart his forehead drops to mine.

“It doesn’t fix anything,” I whisper.

“No.”

“She’s still gone.”

“Yeah.” His arms tighten. “But I’m not.”

We sit with that. With the love that arrived on time and the friendship that might not survive it and the impossible calculus of both things being true simultaneously.

“I wish we’d said it in clean air,” I admit.

“Me too,” he says. And that’s all. There’s nothing else to say.

Around three in the afternoon Kane’s phone buzzes.

He goes still.

“What?”