Page 203 of Safe With You

“She offered to come?”

“She offered to supervise.”

Luna laughed. “That sounds like her.”

“She’s six.”

“And?”

“And I’ve been doing this longer than she’s been alive.”

“Hasn’t stopped her yet.”

“Nothing stops that child.”

The affection in my voice must have given me away because Luna smiled, softer this time.

“She’s special.”

“She is.”

“You’ve done a good job with her.”

The words settled differently than I expected them to.

I looked down at my coffee for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “Thank you.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

There were plenty of things I could say after that, but none of them felt necessary. Luna knew enough about Elena now to understand that raising Mila had never been something I imagined doing alone, and she didn’t turn the compliment into sympathy.

She simply meant it. Our food arrived a few minutes later, giving us something else to focus on. We settled into eating, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to find its rhythm again.

For all the attention I’d given that morning to what I was wearing and whether eight-forty-five was too early to show up at her apartment, the date itself didn’t feel nearly as complicated as I expected it to.

It was still Luna.

She stole a piece of bacon from my plate less than five minutes after our food arrived and looked genuinely offended when I pointed out that she had her own. She told me about a shipment that was supposed to come into the bookstore sometime that afternoon and complained that the delivery driver had developed a habit of stacking boxes directly in front of the office door. I told her about Mila deciding last week that she wanted a pet, although the type of pet changed every time she remembered she was asking. Yesterday, it was a snake.

Luna immediately told me that under no circumstances should I buy my child a snake, and somewhere between that and me explaining that I never said I planned to, I stopped thinking about the fact that we were on a date.

Not because it stopped feeling like one, but because being there with her didn’t require me to become somebody different just because it was.

By the time the waitress cleared our plates, Luna checked the time on her phone and her eyes widened.

“What?”

“It’s nine forty-three.”

I reached for the check the waitress left behind. “Okay.”

“Okay?” She looked at me. “I have to be at the store at ten.”

“I know.”

“It took us twenty minutes to get here.”