Nine months after the summit, Clara sent Roesha a photograph of Mia holding up a cardboard volcano. There was a smear of red paint across Dominic’s chin in the background. Sophia had taped a paper sign to his shirt that read ASSISTANT.
Clara’s message came a minute later. He is available for your dinner now. I have relieved him of his duties on the grounds of excessive glitter.
Roesha smiled. It was the first joke Clara had made to her about a date. She took it for exactly what it was.
Once Clara’s own tissue had grown into the graft, Edward weaned her off the resonance a little at a time. At her last scan, her pulse belonged to her again.
After the divorce was final, Clara kept the house and went back to teaching on a part-time schedule while she finished her recovery. Dominic took an apartment close enough to walk the girls to school. On Thursdays, he brought both of them home for pancakes, even when the school pickup line made him late enough to call them dinner. He had his pack rank back, with an elected review board between the Alpha’s orders and an enforcement team’s weapons. He had voted for the board himself.
Roesha kept her hospital appointment in Chicago and took one week a month in Covington to build an inter-pack surgical service with Edward. The ward recorded a faint knock now and then. The last one had come on a Tuesday during her morning rounds in Chicago. She’d logged it, checked in with the warden on duty, and gone back to her patient.
Dominic was waiting for her on Edward’s porch with a foil-wrapped plate.
“Carmella sent leftovers,” he said. “She also told me if I use the phrase ‘I’m a simple man’ again, she’s going to tell you how long I stood in her kitchen practicing what I wanted to say.”
“Was it a long time?”
“She started a second sauce.”
Roesha laughed. He sat beside her on the step and passed her the plate. From inside came Eric’s voice, loudly explaining to Hailey that a person could lose at dominoes and still be right about the rules.
“Do you want to know what I practiced?” Dominic asked.
“Only if you mean it.”
“I want us to have a life together. Some of it here, some in Chicago, whatever we work out. I want to know who you are when nobody’s bleeding and the floor stays where it belongs.” He looked down at his hands. “I’ve already asked you to dinner. I wanted to ask if you’d like to see where this goes.”
She let him wait a moment. It was pleasant to have time.
“Yes,” she said. “And next month, you’re coming to Chicago. I’ll introduce you to my colleagues as the man I’m seeing.”
“Do I get to introduce you as the woman I love?”
She leaned into him, feeling the steady warmth of his shoulder. “If you’re ready for me to say it back.”
His smile came slowly. He asked before he kissed her. The porch stayed quiet under their feet.