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People watching meant very different things to them, she had realized early on in their acquaintanceship. While she people watched and tended to make up stories in her head as to who she was seeing and what she was watching, Sebastian would people watch for many other reasons: to gauge a target, to make sure they were both safe, to know who could be a potential threat and who could be a potential ally. He had an uncanny ability to read people that was on par with Sherlock’s deductive skills, she’d realized.
Maybe that was what had sparked her interest in getting to know him better.
Today they were at a cafe, waiting for the rain to stop. They had, as much as was possible, a rather normal relationship. It was so different than it had been with Jim; she had been a mistress of sorts, second to his empire. Only the foolish flaunted their mistresses. When she wanted to go out and try something new, he had sent Sebastian to make sure she was safe.
And all those incidents ended with a trip to a cafe, people watching.
It was such a normal part of their relationship, from even before it had been romantic or even sexual, to sit and observe. She was getting better at looking at people the way he did, and she wondered if that was a bad thing, to look at the world through the lens of everyone being a potential threat.
“Let’s try your game.”
She looked away from the window and gave him a small smile. “My game?”
“Stories. For the people we see.” He picked up his coffee and took a sip before leaning back and hooking an arm on the seat next to him. “I’ll start.”
“Alright,” she said with a nod.
He turned back to the window and then pointed at a woman struggling to balance a toddler on her hip while holding an umbrella against the onslaught of rain and wind. “Her husband left her and she’s trying to cheer her little one up,” he said. “You can see the lack of wedding band on her hand but still see the lines that she wore one. And that’s a very cranky toddler.”
“It could be she’s getting wet because her mum can’t keep the umbrella over both of them,” Molly said, her smile widening as she picked up her cup of herbal tea.
He tilted his head back and forth for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, I can concede that.”
“I think it’s the little girl’s birthday,” Molly said after taking a sip. “She has on sparkly red shoes and a dress, and no mother in their right mind would dress their daughter in a dress in this weather.”
“If her husband just left her, perhaps she’s not in her right mind,” Sebastian said with a shrug. She stuck her tongue out at him and got a chuckle in response. “I know you would manage.”
“I would?” she asked, tilting her head. Whatever they were, relationship-wise, she had never questioned how serious they were. Sebastian was...Sebastian. He was there and solid and much more stable than Jim had ever been. He had his own set of morals and his own things he cared about.
And she knew she was one of those things, but she had never asked just how much he cared.
“If anything happened to me, you’d be sad, but you’d be fine. Any kids in our lives, they’d have someone taking care of them who wouldn’t fall to pieces over my loss.”
She set her tea down and reached over for his hand. “I would be devastated, you know.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you’re important to me,” she said. “Because you’re...important.”
“I’m just an assassin with no master,” he said with a shrug.
“You’re my boyfriend and I love you, moron,” she said, getting annoyed that he didn’t see what she meant. And he should. He was more of her world than she had ever expected him to be.
He played with her fingers. “You’re important to me too,” he said quietly. “I should show you how much.”
“How?” she asked.
“By marrying you,” he said. “By letting go of my past as much as I can. By being...better.”
She let go of his hand and he frowned until she got up and slid into the seat next to him, framing his face with her hands. “You owe me a ring,” she murmured before kissing him softly. This was not what she had expected at all, but as with everything else that had happened between them since the day on the roof, it just felt right. And for once, she was going to let herself feel what was right and not worry about anything else.