Page 101 of Time After Time

He leans closer, brushing his shoulder against mine. “Something older. Something bolder. Something that says we made it. A vintage Dom Perignon. We’ll open it for our wedding.”

My heart skips.

What? What did you say, Ransom? Wedding? Marriage? Like commitment? Like forever. Like…what the…?

Since I have no idea how to handle that and I don’t want to discuss it, I lift my glass to his.

“To staying in the moment.”

He laughs, knowing precisely what I’m doing, and clinks his glass against mine. “To second chances.”

“Yes, to that, too.”

Right now, I can do second chances. But marriage is a ski slope too far. We’ve just gottenback-ishtogether. We’ll see if we can last after we go home, after we leave the magic of Chamonix and the holidays.

My fingers curl around the wine glass.

For a while, we sit in silence, sipping, watching the sky. No pressure. No walls.

He holds up some bread with cheese. I let him feed me. He likes that. Likes it even better when I lick his fingers; I see the telltale flare of his nose that tells me he’s aroused.

“You used to tell me about the stars, like bedtime stories for the sky.”

I tilt my head back. “There—Cassiopeia.” I point. “The queen. She’s always upside down this time of year.”

“Upside down?” He bites into a slice of baguette loaded with Brie.

“Yeah. It’s part of the myth. Punishment for her vanity. She’s beautiful, so the gods decided she needed humbling.”

“Seems harsh.” He glances up.

“But she still gets to shine,” I point out.

He nods. “And that’s what makes her interesting.”

I cut a portion of the Manchego and nibble on it. “Even when the world flips her, she’s still visibleandluminous.”

I look at the cheese tray. “Did you bribe Racquel to tell you about all my favorite cheeses?”

“Didn’t need to. Iknowyour favorite cheeses. And if you eat all your cheese and drink all your wine, you can have hot chocolate with”—he tilts his head toward a brown bag—“macarons fromLadurée.”

“Pistachio?” I ask, my eyes wide.

“You’ll have to finish your cheese to find out about dessert,” he teases.

Suddenly, I feel small for doubting his feelings for me when he’s gone out of his way to do something like this for me.

“Just because no one else has done that for you doesn’t mean you should fold the second he does,”Freja said when I told her Ransom was taking me on a surprise date—and how guilty I felt for giving him such a hard time about the past.“It means he needs to keep showing up. Keep doing the work. So you start to believe you deserve to be treated well. That’s his job now.”

“Tell me about your lab,” he says after a beat. “The postdoc work.”

I raise a brow. “You want to hear about exoplanetary magnetospheres?”

“I won’t pretend to fully understand, but I want to know.” He winks. “Andit’s sexy to hear all those terms roll out of your mouth.”

“You sure that you want to risk getting out of control hearing me say things like”—I lower my voice—”Gegenschein.”

“What the fuck is that?”