"Dax."
"Yes."
"Say the words."
A pause. The corner of his mouth.
"I love you," he said. "Specifically. The person who orders drinks that require the bartender to look them up and reads contracts overnight and makes jokes about crackers and built a governance framework in an afternoon and checked the monitor forty-seven times last Saturday and fell asleep in my car mid-sentence and is standing in my kitchen being annoyed that tea doesn't count as a declaration." He held my gaze. "That person. Specifically."
I held the island.
"The tea counts," I said. "But you still have to say it."
"I know," he said. "That's why I said it."
He came around the island. Kissed me — unhurried, the way he did everything when there was no crisis and no framework and nothing required except exactly this.
