“Yes. Oh, my God.” He put his hand on his own chest and grinned, his face still close to hers.

Nola's pulse thumped in her ears. She looked at him, at the shoulders in the printed golf shirt, at the fine fuzz on his exposed arms, at the contour of his lips. Questions buzzed in her head, but the pressure at the bottom of her stomach gave her the answer.

“What’s next?” she murmured, seeing the whole picture. Yet another trade-off—all of Wade when she was losing the other two. “Where do we go from here?”

“It’s up to you.” His voice was hoarse, but his second kiss as light as the first. “It’s been up to you for a while.”

Her head jerked up. “You’ve been waiting all this time?” In her head she went over the dozens of futile dates he had arranged for her, all the short-lived relationships he had witnessed her trying on for size in the three years since Eddie.

“Only since my divorce. You were too young before then.” He threw a couple of bills on the counter and helped her off the stool. “Let’s leave.”

She was unsure whether she could stand up, but she did. In the street, she laced her fingers through his and let new sensations settle into place, like a mosaic of her life that was finally completed.

Her two bodyguards flanked them.

Nola's shoulder touched Wade's, and she squeezed closer, watching herself from a distance. She was so sure that she needed to look no further that it frightened her. She glanced at the bodyguards. “Let’s go to my apartment. We’ll talk.”

In the store window to her right, her face reflected back at her against a cloth with gold threads and tiny mirrors embroidered into it, sparkling in her own eyes and on her forehead. “I need to know the parameters. What if we ruin everything?”

“We won’t.”

“You’re right,” she said. It all fell into place. Right there, on the corner of Spring and Mercer, she was home. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the lips. She didn’t let go for a very long time.

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 41

The voyage was over in more ways than one. At New York’s JFK airport, Nola glimpsed Wade outside the open plane door at the off-limit jetway and her skin tightened into a shield. Since Mauriello’s confirmation of Wade's conspiracy, she had been going over in her head her husband’s encouraging gestures during the first days, his words of love after Lulu had been kidnapped, while he had been the one sending her to the Dying Rooms.