No More Sweet Surrender

And hers.

“Second thoughts?” he asked, in an arrogant tone of voice that scorned the very idea.

But she knew him so well now. She knew what he hid beneath all of that bluster.

“Never,” she said.

He smiled in that open, real way that still made her a little bit giddy, and nodded at the book she held in her hand.

“A memento?”

“It was stuck way back on the shelf in my closet,” she said, flipping it over in her hands. It was a hardcover copy of Caveman Worship, the book that had started all of this. A book of lies that had led her here to the only truth that mattered. “Maybe I should leave it here. I wouldn’t want you to feel you had to ritually burn it in on the terrace one night.”

“Revert to my favorite judgmental professor of old, milaya moya, and I might burn you on the terrace instead.”

“Promises, promises,” she said in a singsong voice, and laughed when he walked into the room and kissed her soundly, then pulled her against him.

“How much longer will we stand here?” he asked quietly. “We have the rest of our lives to start living, and these ghosts are not invited.”

Miranda looked at the book, and felt it all move through her—the things they’d been through. The things they’d put each other through. And what they’d managed to build together out of all of it. Her latest book had been about high fashion as a cultural conversation, and no one wanted to talk about it on television shows. She’d discovered that was a relief. Instead of using entertainment gossip as a way to bludgeon Ivan, she worked with his foundation instead, creating outreach programs for juveniles in homes with domestic abuse.

And he made her forget herself whenever he touched her, and she was finally, perfectly safe. Much better than any fairy tale, she thought.

“Let’s go,” she said. She went to throw the book on the floor. “I think we’re done with this.”

But he stopped her, taking the book in his hand.

“I want it,” he said, grinning at her. Happier and brighter in these last months than ever before. The man, he told her often, he’d always wanted to be. It made her feel like flying. Like they already were. Like together they were made of wings—and joy. “It’s my favorite work of fiction.”

* * * * *