Page 68 of Lady and the Butcher

“And your home?” I asked, circling back because I wanted something solid. “Which address will I be given when I want to send you soup?”

“The river,” he said. “The one above the warehouse. No one watches my door there.”

“I’ll watch it,” I said.

He smiled. “Good.”

He reached for me again, and I went. He turned me toward the glass because it was our ritual now, but it was different this time. Softer. His mouth in my hair and on my temple. His hands firm and sure and patient. We moved together like we had learned a language and could finally stop translating.

Later, when the sky had shifted and the bridge had put its diamonds back on, I lay on my stomach with my face turned toward him. He rested on his side, propped on an elbow, tracing my shoulder with idle fingers.

“You look alive,” he said.

I smiled, then nodded.

“Atticus,” I said, because I liked saying his name. “What happens next?”

“We keep today alive tomorrow,” he said. “We don’t pretend this should be small. We don’t make this harder than it needs to be, and we don’t make it easy when it should be hard.”

“That’s sort of a lot,” I said.

“You like rules,” he said. “You like finding the right ones.”

“Say Lady,” I said, because the word did something to me.

He dipped his head. The sound lived in his chest before it lived in his mouth. “Lady.”

I closed my eyes, not to hide, but to hold it.

When I opened them, he was watching me like he had all night. Like he would learn me every day and never be bored. I reached up and touched his mouth. He kissed my fingertips. He took my wrist and kissed the inside.

He said nothing else. He didn’t need to.

22

The next morning, I should have gone home.

After everything—the night, the glass, the sex that left me hollowed and full at once—I should have gone back to The Nesting Place. I should have washed bottles, stocked lanolin, answered emails, and proven to myself that I still knew how to keep my hands on the ground.

My phone buzzed. Stephen. I almost let it go to voicemail, but guilt and muscle memory had me swiping before I thought twice.

“Sim,” he said, his voice rough around the edges.

“You sound awful.”

“I’m fine,” he said too quickly. “Probably a bug. You know how it goes.”

I frowned. Stephen didn’t get bugs. Not like other people. He was the kind who could work double shifts in the July heat, live on protein bars and Gatorade, and still show up for Sunday dinner without missing a beat. If he admitted to feeling off, it meant something had already been gnawing at him.

“You seemed off the other night, too. At the fountain.” I pressed my forehead to the cool glass of the window, watching the marsh blur by. “And you’re thin. What’s wrong, really?”

He gave a short laugh that didn’t sound like him. “Just run-down. Happens when you burn the candle at both ends.” A pause, then softer, “You know how it is—you don’t slow, your body finds a way to make you.”

The words sat heavy. I wanted to push, but the distance between us—the phone, the space, the fact that we were both holding back for different reasons—made me let it go. For now.

“Nothing worth worrying about,” he said, and I could picture him rubbing his jaw the way he did when he didn’t want to be read. “I’m more worried about you.”

“Stephen—”