Page 95 of The Moon & His Tides

The kiss was more than an apology. It felt like a promise between us both to do better.

When we broke apart, she smiled at me with a tenderness I hadn’t seen in ages.

“Happy birthday, my darling,” she breathed, reaching up to clean the remnants of lip gloss off my mouth with her thumb in a gesture she’d completed for me a million times in our lives.

The repetition made it more poignant.

I bit the pad of her thumb playfully. “Thank you for the gift of your presence, Savvy.”

“Excellente,” Sebastian crowed, clapping his hands together before pulling out Savannah’s chair for her and then moving swiftly around the table to do the same for me. My wife giggled at his enthusiasm, and I was grateful to him for breaking the serious note into a lighter cadence. “Now, we can feast.”

21

SEBASTIAN

Dinner wasbellissima.

Not only because the food was almost as good as Mama’s and the restaurant always made me feel like I was coming home. But because both Savannah and Adam seemed lighter than air, floating in their seats, smiling freely and laughing openly throughout the entire meal.

It was as if, in the carnage of their epic argument, they had recouped something lost to them for a while. There was aneasebetween them that I realized hadn’t existed before.

It was hard not to hope it was due to me.

But then, I was an actor and a writer. It was impossible for me not to make connections between the two, to romanticise my supporting role in the play of their lives.

After spending the entire day with Adam, seeing how happy and carefree the usually controlled, ludicrously busy Brit had been just playing in the surf and sand, chatting without intention about films we liked and places we’d visited, had been a revelation.

For me, sure, but more so, I thought, forhim.

When was the last time he’d had a day of fun just because?I wondered.

Even when we’d gone that first time to Pinewood Studios, he’d insisted it was a business excursion and not a date.

When I’d finally told him, in a roundabout way, that I loved him, he’d told me immediately he couldn’t.

Was there anything he really wanted outside of acting that Adam Meyers let himself have?

There was even a quality of reservation between the married couple.

A hesitancy to share their true selves with each other.

I thought with Adam, it was about not knowing how.

With Savannah, it was about fear.

Either way, that night felt like we’d entered a new stage.

From arrangement to relationship, one where I wasn’t just the rented boy toy but a real partner. I knew I’d never stand beside them both on a red carpet, but what did that matter, really?

Public acknowledgment wasn’t needed to validate the connection of human hearts.

Only acknowledgement between the three of us was enough.

And for the first time, I felt physically and emotionally linked to both of them and them to each other.

So it wasn’tsurprising that the moment we fell into the car together, clothes were coming off.

I had to drive us safely back to the house in Chelsea, but I still snuck glimpses at Savannah, a little wine drunk and slightly uncoordinated because of it, as she fumbled with the buttons of Adam’s dress shirt. He had only a smattering of golden chest hair, his treasure trail sparkling in the low lights as Savvy pried open his belt and zipper to reveal the base of his thickening cock.