Page 112 of Fall Into Me

“That makes no sense.” I was still refusing to look at him. “How are we getting coffee then?”

“Ash stopped by early this morning to grab the keys.”

“Ash is running the café?” I yelled into an empty kitchen, unable to turn my head toward Fane’s retreating body fast enough before the bathroom door clicked shut. I did manage to move my head in time to see Jerry silently stalking back into the kitchen for another pancake that I may or may not have dropped onto the floor from my overflowing plate.

As soon as Fane pulled into a spot out the back of the café, he turned the car off, hopped out, and walked around to open my door, but he didn’t move back.

To be honest, I was surprised he’d held out as long as he had in asking me about the name of the café. If our roles were reversed, it might have been the first thing I did.

“Why Sunshine?”His question was tentative, and his eyes kept darting between our clasped hands and my face.

It was a relief to have nothing but the want to be truthful with him.Thiswas how it was meant to be between us.

“Your laugh reminds me of sunshine.” He already knew that, I must’ve told him a thousand times. “It always made me warm, happy. Peaceful.” I closed my eyes, a little hum pulling from my chest at just the mere thought of it. “Before you, it was my parents and Abbey. It always came from someone else. I needed to create something like that of my own. I didn’t want to rely on anyone for that sort of peace. I’d hoped this would do it.”

“Did it?”

I nodded, slipping my fingers between his where they rested on my legs. “In a way.”

“Good.” He nodded, a small, sad smile ghosting over his mouth.

When Ash led me into the back room of the café, there were stacks of home-cooked dishes, flowers, and cards from so many people—people whose coffee orders I knew by heart. I hadn’t ever expected them to show up for me the way they had, steadfast in this belief I’d hammered into my mind that if Iwanted warmth and happiness and peace, then I needed to make it for myself.

Seeing the way that I was proved so incredibly wrong loosened something in me.

The feel of Fane there—how solid he was beneath my touch—it made the entire concept of the café seem ridiculous. Yes, I was proud of it, insanely so, of what I’d managed to achieve all on my own. But it was never more clear to me now how short it had fallen in the space I had tried to fill with it.

This.Thiswas peace.

All my life, I’d chased the vibrancy of laughter, yearning to be smothered in it. I always thought that’s what I was after, never giving much thought to the quiet that came after—the kind of peace that lingered softly, like the calm after a storm.

It wasn’t the laughter I’d been chasing. It was this. That steadiness I’d seen growing up, in my parents, in the spaces between their smiles.

In the end, I hadn’t needed to search for it. Peace had found me—all on its own.

* * *

“The last tour is today.” I reached out to drag a finger down the slope of Fane’s nose, and it made me remember the sad little heap my glasses had ended up in after they flew off my face and out the open window when my car went spinning. I thought I’d be sadder about the loss of them—about that last, fragile part of the person I used to be.

But instead, it felt freeing, in a way.

“I told you—” he started to grumble, turning onto his side and tugging me into him gently.

“It’s an important one, plus it’s on my list.” My words were mumbled from the way my face was tucked against his chest, and I felt his body start to shake with sleepy little hiccups of laughter.

“Well, if it’s on the list…” he mumbled into my hair.

“Can you make us pancakes again?” I asked after a second of him not moving. I was pretty sure he was about to fall asleep again.

With a deep sigh, he rolled to the end of the bed, mumbling something about how being soft and approachable was ruining his sleep. He padded into the kitchen in nothing but his briefs, a hand shoved down them for some ungodly reason in a move I was pretty sure was repeated by all of the men on planet Earth.

“Please wash your hands before you cook!” I called out, starting to roll myself off the bed too.

“You’ve literally had your mouth wrapped around my co—” Fane’s words got cut off with a very un-Fane-like squeak thanks to both my pointer fingers digging into his ribs.

He spun to face me, a frying pan held in one hand and the other hand flipping me off, like presenting an attacker with your middle finger mid-fight would be the best use of a free hand.

I held up my two pointer fingers, wiggling them in anticipation of another attack.

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