“We brought bread,” Mena said, lifting a basket. “And Raelin brought trouble.”
“I brought improvements,” Raelin said. “And opinions. Obviously.”
Kylar stepped back from the counter, letting them into the front room. Rush and Tessa drifted, with suspicious casualness, toward the back—close enough that Rush would hear if anything went wrong, far enough to give the illusion of privacy. Kairi smoothed her hands down her skirt like she could iron out the nerves.
“Come with me a minute?” she said to her friends, and led them into the workroom. She looked out once at Kylar who stayed where he was and nodded once to her. She gently closed the door.
The workroom felt smaller with all three of them in it, shelves and drying bundles hemming them close. Kairi wrapped her fingers around the edge of the table until her knuckles whitened, then made herself let go.
“All right,” Raelin said cheerfully. “This had better not be about you changing your mind on the pins. I have sacrificed hours to your hair.” Kairi huffed a laugh that came out thinner than she meant. “Not pins,” she said. “Bigger.”
Mena’s smile faded. “Willow?”
“You know we’re leaving,” Kairi said. “Properly leaving. Not just a trip.” They both nodded. “I want you to hear the rest from me,” she went on. “Not from uniforms and guesses.” She drew in a breath that felt far too big for her chest. “I’m not just going to the capital as a healer. I’m going as what I was born as.” The words ran out of road and dropped.
“I’m Tearia’s missing princess.” She started. "My..name is Kairi. Actually. But, I really do like Willow." She added quickly as her nerves frayed.
Silence hit like a held breath.
Mena’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh,” she said, soft and shocked. “That’s… that’s why they came last year. The guards now. Why Rush looks like he’s carrying a mountain.”
Raelin swore under her breath. “Tears and Saints” Her eyes swept Kairi from head to toe like she might suddenly see a crown. “So you’re not just our Willow. You’re their Princess.”
“I’m both,” Kairi said quickly. “I’m still your Willow. That doesn’t change. But when I go back, there’ll be tutors and expectations and—” she made a helpless face, “—public appearances. A household that runs on rules I don’t know yet. Ladies who help dress me and keep me from tripping over my own skirts in front of the wrong person.”
She tried to laugh. It came out rough around the edges. Mena’s brows drew together. “They’ll just… give you strangers to do all of that?”
“That’s how it’s done,” Kairi said. “Noble families. Court daughters. People who know which fork you’re supposed to use when.”
Raelin made a disgusted noise. “Which fork do you use to stab some idiot who insults you?”
“All of them, if you’re creative,” Kairi muttered, and that got the first real laugh out of all three of them. Mena went quiet in the space after. “If you wanted us,” she said slowly, “would they let us come?” Kairi blinked. “What?” Raelin turned on her. “Exactly. Why should some stranger noble girl get to brush your hair and tell you when to breathe when I have been suffering through those tangles for years?”
“I would like to protest the word ‘suffering,’” Kairi said weakly.
Raelin barreled on. “If princesses need ladies to keep them from tripping over their own skirts, ask for us. I can glare at people in any city. Mena can keep you alive with bread alone. We know you. We can learn the rest.” Mena’s smile was small but steady. “If it’s allowed,” she said. “If it doesn’t shame our families. My mother would cry, then be proud. My father would pretend to grumble and then tell every customer who stands still long enough.”
“Mine would faint,” Raelin said. “Then brag to three villages.”
“You’d really leave?” Kairi asked. “Your families. The shop. The river.”
“We’d be leaving some of it anyway, when you go,” Mena said quietly. “At least this way we’d know you aren’t surrounded by strangers all the time.”
Raelin nodded. “If you want us there, we’ll go. If they’ll let us. If it doesn’t put your neck on a block.” Kairi’s throat tightened. She stepped forward, catching both their hands like anchors. “I don’t know if it’s allowed,” she admitted. “I don’t know if they’ll say yes or send a very polite letter telling me I don’t understand how royalty works. But if there’s a way, I’ll ask. If you’re sure.”
Mena squeezed her fingers. “We’re sure.”
Raelin grinned, bright and sharp. “We’ll bring pins,” she said. “And opinions. Obviously.”
Kairi laughed through the prickle in her eyes and hauled them both into a hug. “You have to write,” Mena murmured into her shoulder. "You have to invite us to all the scandalous parties,” Raelin added. “I will,” Kairi said, and meant every word. She started to pull back, felt her courage wobble—and blurted the next part before it could scatter.
“Damon and Dato will be on the escort,” she said. “Coming here. To escort Rush and me.”
Mena and Raelin both went very still. “Here?” Raelin said at last. “As in… here here?” Mena blinked. “This house?” she clarified faintly. “In person. Breathing. Doing… prince things?” Kairi’s mouth twitched. “Yes. This house. The escort will stay in Brindlecross before we leave. They’ll be—” she gestured weakly toward the front room “—out there. Existing. Sitting at our table. Tripping over Rush’s boots like everyone else.”
Raelin made a strangled noise. “Saints save us,” she said. “I need to change my entire wardrobe.” Mena pressed a hand to her own cheeks, as if to cool them. “I’m going to drop a tray on one of them,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”
“You won’t,” Kairi said automatically. “You’ll be fine. They’re just—”
“Princes,” Raelin supplied. “In this town. In this shop. Breathing.” Her eyes narrowed suddenly. “Do you know them?”
Kairi laughed, a little nervous. “I… have letters,” she admitted. Mena surprised them all. “…Can we read them?” she asked, then rushed on, “Or are they… private?” Raelin was already bouncing where she sat, hands clasped under her chin. “Please tell me they’re not all boring,” she said. “Please tell me at least one of them says something tragically stupid.” Kairi giggled. “You can read them,” she said. “Just… don’t tell anyone if they are tragically stupid.”
She crossed to the little shelf where she kept her bag tucked between jars. The leather was worn smooth where her fingers always found the same spot. She eased it open and shuffled past folded lists and a wrapped bar of mint soap until her fingers closed on familiar paper. Two letters, edges softened by re-reading. One in Damon’s quicker, looping hand. One in Dato’s careful script. Her heart did a small, traitorous flip just touching them. She handed one to each girl without looking too closely at which went where.
Mena took hers as if it might crumble, holding it by the corners. Raelin snatched hers like a thief with a pie.
They read. The workroom went very quiet except for the faint rustle of paper and the occasional tiny intake of breath. Mena’s eyes moved steadily, her expression shifting in small, precise increments: surprised, amused, something softer. Raelin’s face did none of that in moderation. Her brows shot up; her mouth fell open; at one point she pressed her lips together so hard Kairi was sure she was swallowing a comment by force. “Switch?” Raelin demanded finally, hand already out. Mena nodded quickly. They traded.
Now Mena read Damon’s letter. The one full of easy charm and sideways jokes about palace tutors, the one where he’d called himself “the spare with opinions” and asked what Brindlecross smelled like after rain. Her mouth tugged, half reluctantly, into a smile. Raelin read Dato’s. The one that talked about maps and roads he hadn’t walked yet, about mint tea and the hour after the rain, the one where he’d admitted he didn’t know how to be a good prince to someone who wasn’t in the same room, but wanted to try. Her expression shifted from eager nosiness to something almost… impressed.
“Well,” Raelin said at last, folding Dato’s letter very carefully along the original crease. “Prince Damon is trouble.”
Mena snorted, startled out of her reverent silence. “In a good way,” Raelin amended. “The kind of trouble that steals fruit off platters and flirts with the wrong people on purpose. If you’re bored at a party, you find him.” Mena considered that, still holding Damon’s letter like it was slightly illegal. “He sounds… lonely,” she said quietly. “Under all of that. But yes. Trouble.” Raelin pointed at the letter in Mena’s hand. “That one will break hearts and laugh about it.” Mena’s gaze slid to the other letter, now back in her hands. “And this one,” she said, smoothing the paper gently, “is careful. I like him.”
Kairi’s stomach did something complicated.
“He thinks about what you say,” Mena went on. “He remembers little things. The mint. The way you described the river.” She glanced up, eyes sharp in a way people often missed under her softness. “He writes like he wants to know you, not just impress you.” Raelin nodded slowly, a rare moment of agreement. “He’s the one you send the hard things to,” she said. “The nights you can’t sleep. The questions about… crowns.” She wiggled her fingers around the word.
Kairi’s ears burned. “You got all that from two letters?” she protested weakly. “We’re very talented,” Raelin said loftily. Mena smiled, gentle and knowing. “You’re fond of him,” she said. Not quite a question. Kairi opened her mouth, closed it, and settled on, “I’m… grateful. For both of them. For the letters. For… not leaving me to figure this all out alone.”
Raelin slid Damon’s letter back across the table; Mena did the same with Dato’s. Both of them handled the paper with exaggerated care now, as if it were something precious. “Thank you for letting us read them,” Mena said. Raelin grinned. “We are now officially qualified to advise you on princes,” she announced. “For a modest fee of cake.”
Kairi laughed, the knot in her chest loosening another notch. “I’ll see what I can do.” She tucked the letters back into her bag, fingers lingering for one heartbeat longer than necessary on Dato’s neat script. When she straightened, Mena and Raelin were still watching her, with shock, yes, and excitement, and a little worry, but not like she’d turned into someone else.
Mena tipped her head, thoughtful. “Which prince are you wanting?” she asked softly. “Or… is it not a prince at all?” Raelin, miracle of miracles, actually went quiet, eyes bright, waiting. Kairi rubbed at the side of her finger, buying herself a breath. Faces rose unhelpfully in her mind: Damon’s careful charm in ink, the boy she half-remembered from Mylain’s halls; Dato’s margin-quiet letters about windows and chipped mugs; Kylar’s hand closing around hers on a Brindlecross lane.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. It was the truest thing she could say without tearing the world open.
Mena’s shoulders eased a little at that. “You don’t have to,” she said. “Know yet, I mean. You haven’t even met them properly. Letters are… pieces.”
Raelin leaned forward, propping her chin on her fist. “For the record,” she said, “Damon writes like he knows people are listening over his shoulder. Very charming, very polished, I will absolutely let him buy me a drink if the opportunity arises.” Her mouth curved. “Dato writes like he forgot anyone else existed once he started talking to you.”
Heat climbed Kairi’s neck. “That’s not—”
“It is,” Raelin said cheerfully. “He notices things. The chipped mug. The way you talk about rain. That’s… different.”
Mena tapped one finger against the table, gentle. “They both sound kind,” she said. “Just… in different directions. Damon sounds like a storybook prince you’re supposed to be happy about. Dato sounds like someone who is trying very hard to listen.”
Kairi stared at the grain of the wood for a moment, throat tight. If they knew how long he’d been listening. How many storms. “I don’t know what I want yet,” she said, more steadily this time. “I’ve never been to Carlbrin. I’ve never seen either of them where they’re… themselves.” Her mouth twisted. “And I don’t want to pick someone just because a title fits on paper.”
Raelin made a pleased little noise. “Good. Don’t. Make them work for it. Both of them. All of them.” She flicked her hand. “Prince, guard, baker’s boy, whoever. If they want you, they can prove they see you.”
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“Willow and Kairi,” Mena added quietly. Kairi’s gaze snapped up to hers. “That’s what you said,” Mena reminded her. “You’re both. So whoever you end up with should see both.” Kairi swallowed around the ache that rose at that. A boy under a willow, a guard in her doorway, a prince in a high room, all with the same eyes.
“That’s what I want,” she said, barely above a breath. “Someone who can hold both.” Raelin pointed at her. “There you go. That’s your answer for any nosy aunt who asks which prince you’re going to pick at the market. ‘The one who can keep up with both of me or none at all.’”
Kairi huffed out a laugh that was half-tear, half-relief. “You’re assuming there’ll be a line.”
“There will be a line,” Raelin said firmly. “You’re a princess. You were already a menace. Now you’re a princess with good soap and sharp opinions. They won’t know what hit them.” Mena reached across and squeezed her fingers once. “And if it ends up not being a prince at all,” she said, “that’s allowed too.”
Kairi didn’t trust herself to answer that out loud. She just squeezed back.
Kylar didn’t hear all of it. He wasn’t trying to, not this time. But the workroom door didn’t fully catch, and sound slipped out in pieces.
“Princess.”
“Not strangers. Us.”
“If there’s a way, I’ll ask.”
A rustle of paper, Raelin’s muffled “Letters?” and Kairi’s quick, flustered laugh. He didn’t need every word to put it together.
She let them read them, he realized. Damon’s… and mine.
He stood by the counter, fingers resting on its edge, listening to the rush of his own heartbeat under the faint murmur of voices. Strangely, the thought didn’t twist. If anyone in this town had earned those pieces of him on the page, it was the two women who’d just offered to uproot their lives so she wouldn’t have to face a crown alone.
There, he thought, as something clicked into place. You asked what you could bring with her, not just what you’ll take away. There it is.
When the three women emerged again, eyes a little red but laughter still pressed into the corners of their mouths, he busied himself stacking jars that did not need stacking. Mena gave him a small, polite nod. Raelin’s gaze skipped from him to Kairi and back with bright, newly assessing interest. Kairi’s smile, when it landed on him, was tired and shining all at once, like someone who’d stepped onto a new road and hadn’t quite found her balance yet.
The rest of the afternoon stretched itself into small, ordinary work.
Rush, Tessa and Kylar sat at the table as they both worked with Rush teaching him the signs. Rush at one point pulled a jar out of his pocket and swallowed some pills. Kylar noted it was the jar that Kairi got out the other day. His meds he mentioned. He began to wonder what was all in them and did Kairi need to get more for him? Did the pills help him focus? To sleep even? What was it like in there in that head. "How long till those kick in for headaches?" He asked as he heard Raelin's laugh from the next room.
Tessa was writing out words and preparing her next lesson plan when Rush shrugged. " About ten minutes or so. Sometimes sooner." Kylar nodded and glanced over at the next words they were going over.
By the time the light slanted gold across the floorboards, Mena and Raelin had gathered up their basket and their courage to leave.
Kairi walked them to the door, hugging each of them hard enough that Raelin complained about her ribs and then hugged her back just as fiercely. Promises of letters, scandalous parties, and not forgetting Brindlecross tangled in the doorway.
Kylar hesitated only a breath before following them out into the lane.
“Mena,” he said quietly. “Raelin.”
They both turned. He stopped a pace away, enough distance to be polite, not enough to feel like he was holding court on a dirt street.
“Earlier,” he said. “When you said you’d go with her. As part of her household. Ladies in waiting, whatever they call it at court.” He kept his tone even, though his hands itched to sign every word. “Were you serious?”
Raelin looked him up and down, arms folding. “Do I look like I make jokes about leaving my entire life behind?” she demanded, then made a face. “Fine. I do. A lot. But not about this.”
Mena’s expression was gentler, no less firm. “We were serious,” she said. “If it’s possible. If it doesn’t make trouble for her, or shame our families. We’d go. It would be… an honor.” She glanced back toward the house, voice softening. “And I think she’d be less afraid.”
Kylar nodded once, the movement sharp as a promise. “If there’s a way to make it work,” he said, “I’ll find it.”
Raelin narrowed her eyes. “You say that like a man who actually knows where to knock.” He didn’t confirm or deny. “Can I tell her you meant it,” he asked, “if—when—it becomes something more than a wish?” Mena thought about that, then shook her head. “Maybe wait until you know it’s not going to hurt more than help,” she said. “She’s already carrying enough ‘maybe’ on her shoulders.”
He accepted that with the seriousness it deserved. “Understood,” he said. “Thank you. For being willing.” Raelin tipped her chin up. “You’re welcome, Your Guardliness,” she said. “Don’t make us regret saying it.” He almost smiled. “I’ll do my best,” he said. They headed down the lane, their voices sliding into the low murmur of evening. He watched until they turned the corner and vanished behind the curve of houses. For a moment he just stood there, the lane quiet around him. Brindlecross easing into its twilight: a dog’s bark somewhere farther off, the clink of a bucket at the well, the faint smell of the smithy’s banked coals.
His hand drifted, almost on its own, to the inner pocket of his coat. His fingers brushed paper. He drew it out. The envelope was softened at the edges, thumb-creased from weeks of handling and never opening. Her handwriting on the front, neat and careful:
To His Highness Prince Dato
Jayce had pressed it into his palm he’d said. Don’t make me a liar.
Kylar had been carrying it ever since. Through meals, through walks through the town, through pine soap and hilltop kisses. Always meaning to wait for a moment when his head was clear.
His head was not clear now. He opened it anyway.
The paper crackled as he unfolded it. Ink in her hand, steady and sure.
To His Highness Prince Dato (and the east windows that keep yesterday’s warmth),
“Penpals” still feels like the right word. Thank you for answering simply; it made the room quieter here, too.
You asked what sound tells me a place is safe: water beginning to boil (even when I don’t need it), knives on a board when supper is honest, and—this will sound foolish—boots on gravel coming home. Perhaps that last one is more a hope than a sound, but it works.
Margins: I write in them when my hands won’t keep still. Maps and recipes end up full of small thoughts. I leave pages clean only when they belong to someone else.
One ordinary thing I’d like unchanged when I move to the capital: the first hour after rain. If there’s a window where it smells like wet stone and the world forgives things for a little while, that’s the place I’d like to find. (A chipped mug would help. Mine earned its chip on a market morning when I laughed while not watching my feet; the mug remembers it better than I do.)
You mentioned travel journals that forget to be grand. If you have a favorite whose footnotes are worth stealing, will you write the title? And—if a day lets you—what small chore buys you the most calm that isn’t a hinge or a latch? (I am collecting practical rituals.)
For mornings: I reach for the kettle first as well, and then a window latch to prove (as you wrote) that the day will open. It’s a comfort that we agree about that.
Thank you for leaving my sketch open longer than you meant to. I’ll try another along the margin next time, if the pears don’t distract me. If the bells are bossy where you are, I’ll keep my letters small enough to slip between them.
— Kairi
[Along the side: a quick sketch of a window ledge beaded with rain, and a small chipped mug.]
P.S. I know the name you wear in daylight and the one you keep in your quieter hours. Both are you. I will keep your secret. When you are brave enough—come find me, Kylar.
The title caught in his chest. The east windows. Yesterday’s warmth.
He could see her as she’d written it: at that little table by her own window, steam from her chipped mug fogging the glass, boots on gravel a sound she was still waiting to mean home.
The rest of the letter moved through him like something he’d been thirsty for and too stubborn to admit. Safe sounds. Margins. Wet stone after rain. Her wanting some small corner of the capital that still felt like this.
And then the P.S.
His eyes snagged there and wouldn’t move on.
I know the name you wear in daylight and the one you keep in your quieter hours. Both are you. I will keep your secret. When you are brave enough—come find me, Kylar.
Heat climbed the back of his neck though he was alone in the lane. The two names sat there on the page Prince Dato and the one she’d written, Kylar, and instead of pulling away, she’d simply…invited him.
When you are brave enough—come find me. His mind blanked a little and filled with one thought. She knew.
In the back of his skull, Rush’s presence stirred faintly, a dragon turning over in distant sleep. That thought must have yelled out and caught his attention.
He folded the paper along its crease, slower this time, and slid it back into his inner pocket, close enough that his next breath felt like it had to move around it.
Relief hit first, sharp and dizzying. She knew. She knew
She had known, days now, maybe longer. Known that the prince who wrote from east windows and the guard who walked her streets were the same man. Known the name he wore in daylight and the one he kept for quieter hours, and instead of turning away she’d written both are you and drawn him a map:
Kylar. She wrote Kylar.
Right behind the relief came panic, colder and more familiar. If she knew, then every look, every touch, every easy “Kylar” held that weight. No wondering left at all about whether he was lying to her; only the question of whether he was going to keep hiding from the truth she’d already reached out and touched. He thought of her, then, not as ink on a page but as she had been all week: at the town center, waiting for Onyx’s hooves in the lane; at the shop door, glancing up when boots hit gravel and that hopeful sound turned real; under the willow, always the first to say are you there? Even when the storms made it hard.
Always waiting for him, without ever once demanding he be more than he’d managed that night. He saw every moment then lining all up with her smile turning toward him. Her patience with him. Her hope and happiness seeing him. The way her eyes lit up when his eyes focused on hers after she healed him.
He stared at the sky, and made himself a quiet, vicious promise: Stop making her wait. For explanations. For names. For you.
The hinges creaked softly, a line of lamplight widening across the stoop. He waited to see if it was her or her brother who came.
“Sneaking off?” Kairi asked, amusement tucked into the edges of her voice.
He turned.
She stood there bare-foot on the worn boards, braid a little mussed from Raelin’s hands, a faint smudge of ink near the heel of her thumb. The light behind her turned the edges of her hair to copper and caught on the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes from laughing. She looked like home and she was looking at him the way she always had.
Like he was exactly who she’d been expecting to see. His chest hurt. How hadn’t he noticed, all these days, that she’d already made room for all of him?
Relief and panic tangled under his ribs. She knew. She had known. And she’d still been here, moving around him, waiting the way she always did—meadow, palace, Brindlecross. Stop making her wait, he thought, and filed it as a vow. He took a step and leaned one shoulder lightly against the doorframe beside her, buying himself a heartbeat, fingers brushing the inside of his coat where the letter rested.
“Just… catching up on some correspondence I’ve been disgracefully late answering,” he said, tone easy. “And realizing you’ve been sharing my correspondence with your co-conspirators.” Her brows knit, then shot up. Color climbed her cheeks fast. Her hands flew up as if she could grab the words out of the air and shove them back into her mouth. “Oh,” she blurted. “I—Kylar, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have let them read— I mean, they asked, and Raelin was—”
“It’s all right,” he said, and was faintly surprised by how true it felt. “I only heard the important parts. That I can hold both of you. And that I was trying very hard to listen and I forgot anyone else existed. Which...is accurate” That startled a laugh out of her, quick and bright. It faded halfway as the rest of it caught up with her. Her gaze dropped, just for a breath, to his coat where the letter sat, then climbed back to his face. Her eyes searched his, hopeful and wary at once.
“You… read it,” she said, voice gone small and careful. Not a demand. Just checking where the ground was.
The P.S. sat between them like a third heartbeat. In her chest, something tight she hadn’t named eased and flared all at once. For days she’d lived with the knowledge that she’d written it, that foolish, brave line about knowing both his names and inviting him to come find her when he was ready. She’d wondered if he’d open it and decide the safest thing for both of them was to pretend he hadn’t.
He hadn’t pretended. He’d just taken his time. He stepped in that fraction closer that made his voice theirs alone. “I did,” he murmured. Up close she could see the way his lashes lowered, the pulse at his throat jumping once and then steadying because he made it. “It’s a good letter.” Her heart tripped. Relief, embarrassment, and something softer tangled in her ribs. She swallowed. “Including the part where I was… very rude to a prince?” she managed. A corner of his mouth tugged. “Especially that part,” he said. “You’re allowed to be rude to me. You’ve earned that right.”
Her breath caught again. The world seemed to tilt on a new axis where she stood: the boy from her storms, the guard in her doorway, the prince in the east windows, all of them looking at her with the same eyes. He let himself breathe around the weight of being known and chose the line she’d handed him at the bottom of that page.
“And for the record,” he added, quieter, “I think I’m… working on the brave part.” It took her a beat to hear it as more than a throwaway phrase. Then the shape of her own words slotted into place. Oh, she thought, a little dazed. He heard me. “Good,” she said, the word coming out more honest than smooth. Her fingers curled around the edge of the door, needing something to hold onto. “Is your heart racing?” He watched her hand there for a moment, then gently took it, easing her fingers off the wood and laying her palm flat against his chest.
“Check,” he said. Under her hand, his heart hammered, hard and fast and utterly unconvincing as calm. Heat rushed up her throat. “You’ve gotten better at hiding this,” she whispered. He chuckled low in his chest and didn’t move her hand away. “Practice,” he said. "Thousands of nights with you" He could have left it at that. He’d already said more than he’d planned. But the promise he’d made on the stoop, pressed against his ribs like the fold of paper. He dipped his head until his mouth was near her ear, lamplight painting the curve of her cheek in gold. “To answer your earlier question,” he murmured, breath warm against her skin, “no. I wasn’t sneaking off.” Her fingers tightened in his shirt. “I don’t intend to go anywhere without you,” he added, and then, because the bravest part was not hiding which him he meant, “whether you’re calling me Dato or Kylar.”
Her throat worked. For a second all she could do was feel, feel the certainty under the words, feel the way he had finally set both names side by side out loud, feel the yes that rose up in her before worry could get its hands on it. “I like both,” she said, very quietly. “I’ve… already accepted both.” The admission felt like stepping off something and discovering there was ground there after all and all those dreams were real.
Something in his shoulders loosened, subtle but real, like armor shifting to make room for someone else inside it. He gave her hand the smallest squeeze. “…Say my name,” he whispered, almost into her hair. She could hear the smile in it. Her lips brushed the line of his jaw as she answered, the words barely air. “Dato, I want you.”
His heart fluttered under her palm, a startled stutter, then raced on. He straightened just enough to meet her eyes, letting her see all of it there, fear and hope and the decision to stay. “I… like hearing my name from your lips,” he said. “It’s a… novel thing for me.”
Her answering smile was small and sure and a little damp at the edges. She stepped back and opened the door wider, but kept her grip on his shirt, tugging him with her like she’d simply decided he belonged inside this threshold too.
“Good,” she said. “Because I plan on using it to get your attention more often.”
He huffed a soft laugh and let himself be pulled, crossing the threshold into lamplight and letting this finally be what it always was. Home.