Page 470 of Face Off

“I already planned to bring pizza.”

A laugh escapes me.

Ryan reaches toward the nightstand and opens the drawer again. This time, he removes a key attached to a plain black ring.

“What is that?”

“The reason Briggs is going to accuse me of replacing him.”

He places it in my palm.

The metal is warm from his hand.

“Ryan.”

“You came home. You should be able to enter it without waking my hungover intruder.”

“I’m going back to Michigan tomorrow.”

“The key works from Michigan too. It becomes more useful when you return.”

“What if the conversations go badly?”

“The lock will still open.”

“What if I need longer?”

“The lock will still open.”

Emotion closes my throat.

Ryan folds my fingers around the key. “This isn’t pressure, a deadline, or a reward for completing your accountability tour. It is access to my home because I want you inside it.”

I press the key against my chest.

“Briggs is going to become emotional,” I whisper.

“He’ll steal another copy.”

“He already has one.”

“I’ll change the locks.”

“He’ll crawl through the ventilation system.”

“That sounds like him.”

I kiss Ryan before the tears can escape. His arms close around me, holding without carrying while morning spreads across the room around us.

Three weeks later, Ryan stands in the middle of my loft with his hands shoved into the pockets of his black hoodie, looking around as though the room has told him something I forgot to include in months of letters.

I remain near the top of the stairs and let him take it in.

The first time he saw Encanto, he had driven through the night searching for me and remained downstairs only long enough to realize I wasn’t home. Today, I unlocked the boutique after closing and watched him move slowly between the racks, touching the sleeve of a reconstructed jacket and stopping beside the display of vintage dresses near the fitting rooms.

The glass sculpture he commissioned from Fragile caught the lights from its place on my desk. Ryan ran his thumb over TAKE UP SPACE before inspecting my workroom with the same concentration he brings to books and game film. He asked about shipping, employees, online orders, and the industrial machine I bought after three months of pretending the old one wasn’t threatening to die.

Then I brought him upstairs.