Page 62 of Partnering with the Artist

“Adoption!” I blurt, a moment after Maelin and I have cozied up with one another’s pages atop her bed. She’s resting perfectly against my shoulder, and I’ve tucked her in with a soft throw blanket I found in a linen closet. It’s not pink, and that is a travesty, but it at least matches all the black she wanted in her studio.

Shifting, Maelin glances up at my face. “What about adoption?”

“I forgot adoption was a thing. Disregard my clinical answers to the first two questions.” Which arenoandnone. “I can see myself growing comfortable with the idea of adoption—ifI can teach myself how to be a good father.” Did not have the best role model, me.

Or, actually, maybe I do have the best role model ever.

If Maelin wants to adopt, I’ll just have to lean heavily on how Viktor raised us with kindness, patience, and more love in his pinky than both our parents had in their bodies combined. Hopefully he doesn’t mind writing aHow to Dadbook for me. It’ll probably take him roughly thirty-seven minutes.

Chuckling, I wrap my arm around Maelin and rub her back. I love her answers to the male and female roles in a relationship.

Her role? Pretty princess.

Mine? Pretty prince.

Then, in parenthesis: I’m sorry. I don’t actually know what this means. I can sew, but I’m not exactly trad wife material. Ithink if we’re both contributing in some form, that’s enough? We can find the roles that need to be filled as they come.

She giggles.

I toy with a lock of her hair, winding it around my finger. “What’s funny, princess?”

“You wrote:Please, have mercy. I will do my very best to appease all visitations you deem necessary, but while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak,in relation to visiting my parents.”

What can I say? Authority figures frighten me.

Is she already on the page with the parent questions? How fast does she read?

Glancing at her, I learn that she’s skipping pages and has turned to the Fight Plan. I suppose she’s assessing her points of highest interest first. I appreciate that she’s going directly to her make or breaks. The longer she reads without telling me we’re over, the more hope I have that maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to keep her.

I set the pages down on my lap to sift through to the Fight Plan, too, then I skim the most pertinent information.

When threatened, she fawns. I fight.

That’s a recipe for disaster. I’m already great at hurting people when I don’t mean to, but our natural inclinations seem as though they might lend to my manipulating her.

“In the heat of the moment,” she murmurs, “I’m very bad at talking things through.”

“I can see that,” I say. It’s a potentially detrimental matter. I can’t settle down if a conflict hangs. I want to handle it immediately, and my tone reflects frustration readily when I’m upset—even before I realize I’m angry at all. In contrast, she needs to calm down, assess her fears, and speak rationally—from a place of understanding, not appeal. “How do we find a compromise here?”

She tucks herself closer to me, and when I glance down, theblush on her cheeks paired with her smile makes my breath catch. “I think…I might be able to get better about controlling my fear response if I learn that you aren’t corrosive in your anger.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you need to talk out issues and your tone is harsh or upset, so long as you aren’t threatening me, I might be able to rationalize and learn that Icantalk to you when you’re angry without having to appease you before something terrible happens.”

“I very much do not see where threatening you comes close to reaching a solution for any argument. My goal is never hostility. I want a solution. Unless, notably, you’re being an idiot, like Viktor seemed to be, the other night…but…perhaps that’s something I need to work on, because with more information, he wasn’t being an idiot at all. Hm.” I let her hair slip from my fingers. “It’s plain to see that I struggle with arrogance; although, the struggle is not always entirely apparent to me in the moment. Given that I pride myself on possessing an intellect that prioritizes reason over emotion and I do not see that same priority always reflected around me, it’s very easy for me to assume moral high ground when I have no right to it. I will work on making an explicit effort to never assume that idiocy plays a contributing factor in any of our conflicts.”

Her legs curl up, and she’s very near on top of me now.

Odd.

All things considered, I’m pretty sure I just told her that I need toput effortinto not assuming she’s being stupid. That’s…kind of something I did not expect to be worthy of deeper cuddles.

It’s below bare minimum.

She should be punching me in the face right now.

If at the Creator’s Ball I do not find a way to swiftly anddiscreetly knee Harry in the groin, I will be very, very upset.

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