Chapter Text
The extended family arrived Thursday evening in waves — aunts and uncles Kate saw maybe twice a year, cousins with spouses Lucy had never met, a second cousin twice removed whose exact relation to Kate no one in the family had ever successfully explained. The backyard filled with folding chairs and string lights and the specific, layered noise of a family too large to have one conversation at a time.
Kate had braced for this evening more than any other so far. Her parents, her grandmother, Noah — they'd had time. Days, now, of watching Lucy fold into the family with an ease that still occasionally stole Kate's breath if she caught it at the wrong angle. But the extended family was different. The extended family arrived with fresh eyes and no context, and Kate had learned, over thirty-one years, exactly how quickly some of them could turn a fresh look into a judgment.
"This is Lucy," Kate said, for what had to be the fifteenth time that evening, steering her toward a cluster of aunts by the dessert table.
Aunt Carol looked Lucy over with the specific, unhurried thoroughness of a woman who considered herself an authority on everyone's life choices. "So you're the one."
"I am," Lucy said, easy and unbothered, extending a hand. "Lucy Tara. It's nice to meet you."
"Tara." Carol's eyebrows lifted slightly. "That's not a name I know from around here."
"No, ma'am. Texas, originally. Hawaii now."
"Hawaii." Something in Carol's tone suggested this was, in her private accounting, a mark against rather than for. "That's very far from Chicago."
"It is. Good thing weddings only happen once, or the frequent flyer miles would really start adding up." Lucy delivered it with a warm, easy grin, and Kate watched Carol's carefully guarded skepticism falter, just slightly, under the sheer, unbothered charm of it.
It went like that, cluster by cluster, across the whole yard. A cousin's husband, David, spent a full ten minutes quizzing Lucy about her job with the barely disguised suspicion of a man who considered "federal agent" a slightly alarming occupation for anyone dating into his wife's family, and came away, twenty minutes later, laughing at something Lucy had said and clapping her on the shoulder like an old friend. A great-aunt named Dot, sharp-eyed and openly nosy, asked Lucy no fewer than six increasingly personal questions in a row and pronounced her, at the end of it, "surprisingly not boring, for a government employee," which from Dot, Kate's mother assured her later, was practically a marriage blessing.
Not everyone thawed quite so fast. Kate caught, more than once, a look passed between two cousins near the drink table — something not unkind exactly, but assessing, faintly skeptical, the specific look reserved for a family member's new partner before the jury had fully come in. Lucy caught it too, Kate was fairly sure, though she gave no visible sign of it at all, simply kept being exactly, entirely herself, warm and funny and unhurried, letting the doubt exhaust itself against her rather than fighting it directly.
There was a harder moment near the dessert table, with Kate's uncle Frank — Robert's older brother, gruffer than the rest of the family, the kind of man who considered most conversation a waste of perfectly good silence. He looked Lucy over for a long moment, unhurried, and asked, without much preamble, "So what's your five-year plan, then? Kids? A house somewhere? Or is this one of those modern arrangements nobody explains to the rest of us."
The yard around them went very slightly quieter, a few nearby conversations pausing just enough to listen.
"Honestly, sir, I try not to plan more than a week ahead in this line of work," Lucy said, easy, unbothered, no trace of defensiveness in it at all. "Statistically, plans don't survive contact with an active federal case. But if you're asking whether I take this seriously — I flew halfway across the country and I'm currently getting quizzed by an entire extended family I met four days ago. I think that answers the question better than a five-year plan would."
Frank studied her for a long moment, something in his weathered face shifting almost imperceptibly, and then, gruffly, approvingly: "Good answer." He clapped her once on the shoulder, hard enough that Lucy visibly rocked with it, and wandered off toward the grill without further comment, which Kate's mother later informed her, quietly delighted, was the single warmest reaction Frank had given anyone at a family gathering in a decade.
It wasn't all tests and skepticism, either. A younger cousin, Mia, no older than nine, attached herself to Lucy within the first twenty minutes and refused to be peeled off for the rest of the evening, utterly entranced by the fact that Lucy carried an actual badge and had, apparently, once caught a real criminal. Lucy crouched down to her level without a hint of condescension, answered every increasingly elaborate question about crime-fighting with total seriousness, and by the end of the night had promised — solemnly, with an actual handshake — to send Mia a postcard from Hawaii, a promise Kate suspected, watching the whole exchange, Lucy fully intended to keep.
The moment that nearly derailed the whole evening came from an entirely different direction.
Marcus — a cousin on Rose's side, a few years older than Kate, who'd gone into investment banking straight out of business school and never missed an opportunity to mention it — had been circling the conversation for a few minutes with the particular restless energy of a man trying to place something. He finally landed on it somewhere between introductions and small talk, his whole face sharpening with sudden, dawning recognition.
"Wait." He was frowning now, studying Lucy with real intensity. "Tara. That's — hang on. Any relation to Omar Tara? The oil guy? Tara Petroleum, out of Dallas?"
The easy hum of yard conversation around them seemed to dip, just slightly, several nearby relatives clearly catching the question too.
Lucy's shoulders went faintly tight, the first genuine crack Kate had seen in her composure all evening. She let out a small, resigned sigh. "Yeah. That's my dad."
Marcus's mouth fell open. "*Holy shit.*"
The words landed loud enough that half the yard actually turned to look, conversations stuttering to a halt around the patio.
"Marcus," Rose said, sharp, immediately sensing where this was headed.
"No, but — Kate." Marcus turned to her, fully lit up now, entirely oblivious to the ripple of discomfort spreading across Lucy's face. "You're telling me you're dating *the* Lucy Tara? Omar Tara's daughter? Kate, do you have any idea — that's a literal billionaire family, that's one of the biggest independent oil operations in the entire state of Texas, I've read case studies on their acquisitions strategy in actual business school—"
"Marcus," Kate said, warning clear.
"I'm just saying, this is genuinely fascinating, I have so many questions—" He was already leaning in further, entirely undeterred, firing questions with the eager, tone-deaf enthusiasm of a man who had no idea he was doing anything wrong at all. "Do you still have any stake in the company? What's the succession plan, did your brothers—"
Lucy's easy, practiced smile had gone thin and a little fixed, her eyes flicking, briefly, helplessly, toward Kate — and Kate didn't need anything more than that single glance to move.
"Marcus." Kate stepped in smoothly, closing the small distance between them with the calm, unhurried authority she used in actual interrogation rooms, effectively inserting herself into the conversation's direct line of fire. "As fascinating as I'm sure the acquisitions strategy is, we're at a family dinner, not a shareholder briefing. Lucy doesn't work for the company. Hasn't in years. That's really not what tonight's about."
"I just think it's incredible, that's all, I mean statistically the odds of anyone from this family ever meeting someone from a family like that—"
"Statistically," Kate said, smooth and even, "you're currently making my girlfriend uncomfortable at a family dinner, which is a considerably more relevant statistic for tonight." She said it lightly enough to avoid an actual scene, but firm enough that Marcus, blinking, finally seemed to register the room's temperature.
"Oh — sorry, I didn't mean—"
"I know you didn't. It's fine. Go get a drink, Marcus." Kate offered him an easy, dismissive smile, and he took the exit gratefully, muttering something about not meaning any offense as he retreated toward the cooler.
Kate turned back to Lucy, who was watching her with an expression that had gone soft and slightly stunned, the earlier tightness in her shoulders already easing.
"You didn't have to do that," Lucy said, quiet.
"I know." Kate reached over, brief and easy, and squeezed her hand once. "I wanted to."
Lucy didn't say anything further, but something in her posture stayed a little quieter for the next several minutes, the earlier easy brightness dimmed just slightly at the edges, and Kate noticed it the way she noticed everything about her these days — quietly, carefully, filing it away.
She waited until they'd drifted a little further from the main cluster of the party, near the edge of the yard where the string lights thinned out, before she leaned in close enough that only Lucy could hear.
"For the record," Kate said, entirely deadpan, "I've decided to fully lean into this. I expect a full tour of the Tara Oil headquarters at some point. I want to see your face on a corporate mural. I assume there's a mural."
Lucy huffed, the corner of her mouth twitching despite herself. "There is not a mural."
"There has to be a mural. Somewhere. A modest one. Lobby-sized."
"There is, unfortunately, a portrait. In my father's office. I was fourteen and deeply unhappy about the sitting."
"A *portrait.*" Kate's eyebrows shot up, delighted. "I need to know everything about this portrait immediately. What are you wearing. Are you holding anything symbolic. A barrel of oil, perhaps."
"I'm wearing a truly regrettable blazer and I am not holding a barrel of anything, though I appreciate the mental image." Lucy was laughing now, properly, the tightness fully gone from her shoulders, and Kate felt something in her own chest ease at the sound of it, warm and immediate.
"I'm going to think about that portrait for the rest of my life."
"Please don't."
"I absolutely am. I'm imagining a very stern expression. Possibly a horse in the background. Old money portraits always have a horse."
"There is, unfortunately, also a horse," Lucy admitted, laughing harder now, and Kate watched her laugh with something warm and helpless blooming in her own chest, quiet and enormous, like watching the sun finally break through after a long grey stretch of cloud.
*Stop it,* Kate told her own heart, firmly, uselessly. *This is getting genuinely out of hand.*
Her heart, as it had been doing with increasing frequency all week, did not appear to be listening.
A few feet away, at the patio table, Rose, Anne, and Sophie had all gone quiet, watching the exchange over the rims of their glasses with matching expressions — soft, delighted, faintly conspiratorial.
"Look at that," Sophie murmured.
"I am looking at it," Anne said, dry, entirely pleased. "I don't think I've ever once watched that girl talk someone down from a scene and then turn around and make a joke gentle enough to fix the mood in the same breath. Not in thirty-one years."
"She's always been protective," Rose said, quiet, something misty creeping into her voice. "Just never — outwardly. Never like this. Never so easily."
"It comes out different with her," Anne said, nodding toward Lucy, still laughing near the edge of the yard. "Doesn't it."
Rose didn't answer, just smiled into her wine glass, watching her daughter — steady, protective, effortlessly gentle in a way none of them had ever quite seen from her before — and said nothing more, letting the two of them have their small, unwatched corner of the evening a little longer.
By the time the sun started sliding low and gold over the yard, most of it had softened into something genuinely warm. Kate stood near the edge of the patio, watching Lucy get roped into a increasingly competitive game of cornhole with three of her younger cousins, laughing freely, and felt something settle in her chest that had very little to do with relief and a great deal to do with something else she still hadn't found the nerve to name properly.
---
It was somewhere in the lull after dinner — plates cleared, the yard settling into the easier rhythm of a family too full to do much besides sit and talk — that Kate noticed Lucy's sleeves.
She'd rolled them down at some point during dinner, some instinct about looking presentable for the extended family overriding her usual preference, and Kate could see it now, the faint restlessness in the way Lucy kept tugging absently at her cuffs, the small, unconscious discomfort of someone wearing something that didn't sit right.
Kate didn't think about it. That was, later, the part she'd turn over the most — how automatic it was, how little deliberation went into reaching over, taking Lucy's wrist gently in one hand, and beginning to fold the sleeve back up to her elbow, the way she'd watched Lucy do to her own shirts a dozen times over the last two weeks.
Lucy went still.
"You don't like full sleeves," Kate said, simply, not looking up from the fold, smoothing the cuff into place with the same unhurried precision she brought to everything. "You told me once. Said they feel like traps. I don't know why I remembered that, but I did."
She finished the first sleeve, glanced up — and found Lucy watching her with an expression that had nothing performative left in it at all, something soft and slightly stunned sitting openly on her face, like she hadn't expected anyone to have actually kept that particular detail.
Kate held out her hand, small, expectant. "Other one."
Lucy offered it wordlessly, and Kate folded the second sleeve with the same care, and neither of them said anything else about it — didn't need to, the whole small exchange happening in a kind of quiet neither of them fully surfaced from until it was done.
A few feet away, at the patio table, Rose had gone very still over her wine glass, watching the whole thing with an expression Anne, beside her, clearly shared.
"Well," Anne said, quiet, mostly to herself.
"I know," Rose murmured back, not taking her eyes off the two of them.
"That wasn't performance."
"No," Rose agreed. "That wasn't performance at all."
They said nothing further, letting it pass without comment, though Rose reached over and squeezed Anne's hand once, something quietly delighted passing between them that neither Kate nor Lucy, still sitting close together at the edge of the patio, seemed to notice at all.
---
Noah found Lucy alone near the drink table an hour later, Kate briefly pulled away by a cousin wanting wedding-planning advice, and used the opening with the deliberate, careful timing of a man who had clearly been waiting for exactly this window.
"Hey. Got a second?"
"Sure." Lucy turned, something in her posture shifting slightly at the change in his tone — less performance, more attention, the teasing brother from the last several days replaced by something quieter.
Noah glanced toward Kate, still deep in conversation twenty feet away, before turning back. "I want to say something, and I need you to actually hear it, not just deflect it with a joke, which I know is kind of your whole thing."
"Noted. I'll try to restrain myself."
"Kate doesn't do this." Noah said it plainly, no teasing underneath it at all. "Doesn't bring people home. Doesn't let people see her like this — relaxed, happy, folding someone's sleeves at a family dinner without even thinking about it. I've watched my sister build a wall around herself for years, and I mostly stopped trying to climb over it a while ago, because it never seemed worth the argument." He paused, something serious settling into his expression. "And then you show up, and inside of a week, the wall just — isn't there anymore. Not with you, anyway."
Lucy didn't say anything, just watched him, quiet and attentive in a way that had none of her usual quick deflection in it.
"I don't actually know what I'm asking you," Noah admitted, a little rougher now. "I guess I just need to know you're not going to be careless with it. Whatever this is. Because I don't think she's built for casual, and I don't think she'd survive it well if this turned out to be less than what it looks like from where I'm standing."
Lucy was quiet for a long moment, something careful and genuine moving behind her eyes. "I'm not being careless with her," she said finally, and there was nothing performed in it at all — just simple, plain honesty, delivered directly. "I promise you that. Whatever this is. I'm not careless with it."
Noah studied her for a moment longer, and then, apparently satisfied by whatever he found, the tension eased out of his shoulders and the familiar grin started creeping back in. "Okay. Good. That's all I needed." A beat, and then, softer: "For what it's worth — I like you. Genuinely. Not just because you tolerate my jokes, though that helps."
"I like you too. Even though you called me Agent Racoon Tara to my face within the first ten minutes of meeting me."
"That's affection, in this family. You'll learn."
"I'm learning fast."
Noah grinned, clapped her once on the shoulder, and wandered off toward the cornhole game before Kate could catch either of them mid-conversation, leaving Lucy standing there a moment longer, something warm and slightly overwhelmed sitting behind her expression that she didn't get much time to examine before Kate reappeared at her side.
"What was that about?"
"Nothing," Lucy said, easy, already reaching for Kate's hand like it was the most natural gesture in the world. "Your brother's just checking his work. Standard big-brother due diligence."
Kate glanced toward Noah, suspicious, and let it go when he offered nothing but an entirely too-innocent wave from across the yard.
---
It was maybe twenty minutes later that Kate learned, for the first time in her entire adult life, what jealousy actually felt like.
She hadn't known, before that moment, that she'd never truly experienced it — had always assumed, distantly, that she simply wasn't built for it, too controlled, too disciplined, the kind of person who processed everything through logic rather than any messier emotion. She discovered, watching a man named Tyler — some plus-one of a cousin's, tall, easy smile, clearly unaware of any social context he'd wandered into — lean in close to Lucy near the drink table and say something that made her laugh, that she had, in fact, simply never had a reason to feel it before now.
It arrived all at once, sharp and entirely unfamiliar, low and hot behind her sternum. Kate watched Tyler's hand land lightly on Lucy's arm, watched him lean in another inch to say something else, watched Lucy laugh again — genuine, easy, the way she laughed at everyone, Kate reminded herself furiously, that didn't mean anything — and found her own feet moving across the yard before her actual brain had finished processing the decision to move at all.
"There you are," Kate said, arriving at Lucy's side with a smoothness that felt, internally, like anything but smooth, sliding an arm easily around Lucy's waist with a casualness she absolutely did not feel. "I've been looking for you."
Lucy glanced at her, something flickering across her face too fast for Kate to read, before turning back to Tyler with an easy smile. "Tyler, this is Kate. My girlfriend."
"Oh — hey, nice to meet you." Tyler extended a hand, entirely oblivious, and Kate shook it with a grip perhaps a fraction firmer than strictly necessary.
"Likewise," Kate said, and then, because some small, previously dormant part of her brain had apparently decided that subtlety was no longer a priority, added, "Lucy mentioned you two were discussing something?"
"Just fantasy football," Tyler said, easy, entirely unaware of the undercurrent. "She knows way more than she should for someone who lives in Hawaii."
"She's full of surprises," Kate said, and heard, distantly, how tight her own voice had gone, how thoroughly she'd failed to sound like a woman who wasn't currently fighting the urge to physically insert herself between two people having an entirely harmless conversation about football statistics.
Tyler, mercifully oblivious to all of it, wandered off a moment later toward the dessert table, and Kate remained exactly where she was, arm still around Lucy's waist, jaw set in a way she only realized once Lucy turned to look at her properly.
Lucy said nothing. She simply looked at Kate for a long moment — something delighted and disbelieving and entirely too pleased with herself dancing behind her eyes — and did not, to her considerable credit, say a single word about it.
Kate felt heat climb her neck the second the adrenaline started fading, the full, horrifying shape of what had just happened arriving several beats too late. "That was—"
"I'm not going to say anything."
"I don't know what that was."
"I know exactly what that was," Lucy said, entirely too pleased, though she kept her voice low enough that no one else could hear it. "And I meant it. I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to think about it. At length. Probably for the rest of the evening."
"Please don't."
"Oh, I absolutely am." Lucy's grin widened, though something warmer sat underneath the teasing — something that looked, Kate thought, distantly, disarmed, almost, like she hadn't expected this either and had liked finding it anyway. "For the record, Tyler and I were talking about the Cowboys' backup quarterback situation. Riveting stuff. You didn't need to intervene."
"I wasn't intervening."
"You put your arm around me and answered a question that was addressed to me."
"I was being affectionate. We're supposedly dating. That's within the scope of the operation."
"Sure," Lucy said, entirely unconvinced, entirely delighted, and let it go there, mercifully, though her hand found Kate's on her waist and stayed there for the rest of the evening, warm and easy, neither of them commenting on it further.
Kate spent the next hour in a low simmer of embarrassment she couldn't fully shake, replaying the whole exchange, appalled at herself, and found, underneath the embarrassment, something else she liked considerably less examining directly: the fact that she hadn't actually regretted it. Not really. Not even a little.
Sophie found her a while later, refilling her wine near the drink table, and didn't bother pretending she hadn't seen the whole thing.
"So," Sophie said, entirely too pleased with herself, leaning against the table. "That was a moment."
"I don't know what you're referring to."
"The Tyler thing. The arm. The voice you used, which I want to be clear I have never once heard you use in the eight years I've known you." Sophie grinned, delighted, clearly not planning to let this go easily. "You went full guard dog over a conversation about fantasy football."
"I did not go 'full guard dog.'"
"Kate. I watched you shake that poor boy's hand like you were trying to break it."
"I shook his hand normally."
"You shook his hand like a woman signing a treaty she had no intention of honoring." Sophie laughed, delighted, nudging her shoulder lightly. "I've genuinely never seen you jealous before. Not once. Not even in college, and you dated some people in college worth being jealous about."
Kate felt heat climb her neck all over again. "I wasn't jealous."
"Sure you weren't." Sophie's expression softened slightly, something warmer underneath the teasing now. "For what it's worth, I think it's kind of wonderful. You've spent your whole life being so controlled about everything, Kate, so careful. It's nice to see something finally get past all of that. Even if it's just fantasy football."
Kate didn't have a response for that, so she didn't offer one, just took a longer sip of her wine than the moment strictly required, and Sophie, laughing again, let her off the hook — mostly.
"You're not off the hook forever," Sophie added, already walking away. "I'm bringing this up at the wedding toast. Consider yourself warned."
"Sophie."
"Love you! Bye!"
---
The house finally quieted well past midnight, guests trickling home in twos and threes, the yard reduced to scattered chairs and half-melted candles by the time Kate and Lucy made it upstairs.
They settled into bed with the easy, practiced rhythm of the last several nights, lights off, the house gone still around them, and it was Lucy, this time, who broke the silence first.
"Confession bed's open for business," she said, into the dark, and Kate huffed a soft laugh despite herself.
"Is that its official name now?"
"It's earned it. We keep ending up in here saying things neither of us would say in daylight." A pause, comfortable, unhurried. "So. Tell me something. Real thing. I'll trade you."
Kate was quiet for a moment, turning the offer over, before deciding, somewhere in the dark warmth of the room, that she wanted to give it. "There was someone in DC. After the on-and-off thing I mentioned before, and before I transferred here. Her name was Cara."
"Yeah?"
"It wasn't much of anything, really. We met at a bar near my office, dated — if you could call it that — for about four months. It was almost entirely physical. Convenient, mostly. Neither of us particularly invested in the other's actual life." Kate stared at the ceiling, the words coming easier than she'd expected. "She ended it, eventually, said I was 'emotionally unavailable in a way that made the whole thing feel pointless.' I remember being annoyed more than hurt. I think that tells you most of what you need to know."
Lucy was quiet for a beat. "Do you think she was wrong?"
"No," Kate admitted, quiet. "I think she was exactly right, honestly. I just hadn't been ready to hear it from someone I didn't particularly care about hearing it from."
"That's very self-aware for two in the morning."
"It's the confession bed. Apparently it extracts things." Kate turned her head slightly, and then, because the weight of her own confession had left her wanting a moment of levity before going further, added, "Your turn. But if you say something devastating I reserve the right to make a joke to recover from it."
"Duly noted. I'll ease you in." A soft, quiet laugh in the dark. "Okay — small one first. I dated a guy for about a month in the academy purely because he had a dog I liked more than I liked him. I broke up with him the week his sister took the dog back after a custody dispute I had no actual stake in. I want that on the record before I say anything real."
Kate laughed, surprised, the sound breaking the heavier mood just enough. "That's deeply unflattering."
"I contain multitudes, some of them shallow." A pause, and then, quieter, the humor fading out of her voice as she continued: "Okay. Real one. Marcella. High school."
Lucy was silent long enough that Kate thought she might not answer at all — and then, quiet, careful in a way Kate hadn't quite heard from her before: "It was the real thing, or as real as it gets at seventeen. She was the first girl I ever actually loved, not just liked, and it was — a lot. Intense, in the specific way first love is intense when you're a teenager who's never had anything to compare it to."
"What happened?"
"She had plans. Real ones — Ivy League, specific city, specific career, a whole life mapped out years in advance. And I loved her enough to try to fit inside that plan for a while, and eventually just — couldn't. She wanted someone who could keep pace with exactly where she was going, and I didn't know yet who I was supposed to be, let alone how to keep up with someone who already knew." A small, quiet exhale in the dark. "It ended badly. Not dramatically, just — sadly. She moved for school. I didn't fight for it the way I probably should have. I've thought about it more than I'd like to admit, over the years."
Kate lay there, something hot and entirely unreasonable rising in her chest at the mention of a girl she would never meet, who existed only in a decade-old memory, who had, by Lucy's own account, done nothing wrong beyond wanting a life Lucy hadn't been ready to promise.
*Beautiful, probably,* Kate thought, mutinous and completely irrational. *Ivy League. Perfect plan. Absolutely not good enough for her, whatever she looked like.*
She said none of that out loud. She simply reached over, in the dark, and found Lucy's hand, threading their fingers together without announcing it, the closest she could manage to saying *I'm sorry, and also, privately, deeply unreasonable resentment toward a teenager I will never meet.*
Lucy squeezed her hand once, grateful, and didn't ask her to explain the gesture.
"For what it's worth," Kate said, finally, "she sounds like she didn't know what she was giving up."
"That's a nice thing to say."
"I mean it. Entirely."
They lay there a while longer, quiet, the confession settling comfortably into the dark between them, and somewhere in the drift toward sleep, the careful distance they'd maintained on the first night dissolved entirely, neither of them fully tracking the moment it happened — Kate simply aware, at some point past two, that she'd curled into the warmth beside her, head tucked against Lucy's shoulder, one arm loosely across her middle, breathing slow and even in a way that made it clear she was long past noticing what she'd done.
Lucy went very still, feeling it happen — the weight, the warmth, the specific, trusting way Kate had settled against her without any hesitation at all, entirely unguarded in her sleep in a way she almost never allowed herself to be awake.
She lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, something enormous and quiet sitting in her chest, and thought, with real and total clarity, that she did not want to move even slightly, not for anything, not even to breathe more comfortably.
She didn't move. She let Kate stay exactly where she was, warm and trusting against her shoulder, and made a small, private decision instead — that she would simply wake early, before Kate did, and shift back to a more careful distance before morning, so that whatever this was, however unnamed and fragile and enormous it currently felt in the dark, wouldn't have to survive the harsher light of an actual conversation before either of them was ready for it.
*Soon,* she thought again, the same promise she'd made herself days ago, watching the slow rise and fall of Kate's breathing in the dark. *Just not yet.*
She closed her eyes, finally, and let herself sleep too, Kate's weight warm and certain against her, and did not, for the first time in longer than she could easily remember, feel even slightly alone.