Page 49 of Lady and the Butcher
The spoon was still warm when I took it back. My knees threatened to do something stupid.
We found a bench with a view of the water and the eternal photo ops. Families posed with toddlers who blinked under the spray. A couple in matching pastel leaned into each other. A group of students debated loudly whether ghosts were real whilea tour guide tried to make them pay attention to colonial history. The city breathed around us, indifferent and intimate at once.
Alicia perched like a ballerina. Stephen sprawled with false ease. Atticus occupied space like a verdict.
For a minute we did the small talk thing, because it was easy.
“How’s the shop?” Stephen asked, bless him for the lifeline he chose.
“Busy,” I said. “Full moon brought two babies in twenty-four hours.”
Alicia laughed. “You’re my idol.”
“I shouldn’t be,” I said. “I forgot to eat one day and cried over a protein bar in my car.”
Atticus’s thigh pressed lightly against mine. Barely there. Intention more than contact. I kept my face straight like it didn’t turn my bones to something unreliable.
Stephen shot him a look over the gelato, the silent message a wall of brother instincts holding back a flood. Atticus looked back with a calm that invited a fight and also promised to walk away from one if he had to, for me.
I didn’t know how I knew that. I just did.
“How’s work?” I lobbed at Stephen, mostly to give his body something to do with adrenaline besides puff his chest.
“Busy,” he said. “I’m catching up now that I’m back in town. Nothing pressing yet, just a dozen small fires to stomp.”
“Romance,” Alicia said.
“The sexiest,” he deadpanned.
I let the chatter wash for a minute, the safe domesticity of siblings and significant others doing what people did at night in this city—eat sugar, breathe salt, pretend time was gentle. Under it all, the ache rang a clean note. What had just happened in that carriage was still loud in my body. What might happen when we went wherever we were going next pulsed like a drum under the bench.
I finished my gelato because Atticus had told me earlier to eat everything on the plate and I was now trained to listen. The spoon scraped the bottom of the cup. He glanced down at the sound and then met my eyes. The look saidgood girlwithout saying a word. Heat climbed my throat in a rush I could have been mad at. If it hadn’t made me feel like I’d caught fire, in a good way.
Alicia set her cup aside. “So, you two,” she said, light like she was discussing weather, curious like she was about to ask a smart question in a meeting. “This is new. Or not?” She cut me a playful look that took some of the sting out of doing this in public.
“It’s … today,” I said, and heard how stupid and honest it sounded.
“Today,” Atticus echoed, a confirmation and a warning wrapped together.
Stephen’s jaw flexed. “How does this work?”
Atticus held his gaze. “Like adults.”
“Adults who tell my mother?” Stephen shot back, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sorry. That came out wrong. I’m not trying to—” He blew out a breath. “You know how I get.”
“Like a golden retriever who thinks the mailman is a threat,” Alicia said, soothing and sly.
He nudged her with his shoulder, grateful.
“I’m not hiding,” I said. “I just—” My eyes found the water. The dark shine of it. “It’s complicated. And simple.”
Alicia looked between us. “Complicated in the way that big things are, or complicated in the way that men make them?”
“Both,” I said.
Stephen turned his cup in his hands. “You’re sure?” He looked at me, not at Atticus. “I’ll back off if you are. I’ll go feral if you aren’t.”
“I’m sure,” I said, and I felt the weight of it settle into my ribs. The certainty wasn’t tidy. It was louder than fear.
