Lena's POV
I left the phone face down on the cushion and I went to sleep.
Not immediately, Marcus was still there, and we sat for another half hour in the Christmas tree lights while the house settled around us and Ethan slept upstairs and the message sat on the cushion between us being what it was. We didn't discuss it. Marcus didn't ask and I didn't offer and that was right, that was exactly the correct handling of it, because some things needed to sit overnight before they became anything other than the initial weight of them.
He left at midnight.
He kissed me at the door, the easy, certain kiss of someone who no longer needed to be careful about the fact of it, who had said what he meant and heard it returned and was living inside that now with the particular steadiness that was si
