“So now it’s okay for me to see everything?” she whispered.

“You already saw almost everything. So what’s another inch? What’s the last little bit?” The sad smile turned almost unbearably fond, and even though it was him saying he was showing her everything, she felt almost painfully vulnerable, like she was made of new skin forming under a bandage that someone had ripped off too soon.

She knew what they were talking about. Even though they were speaking in strangely cryptic terms, she knew what “everything” meant. But she wanted explicit, verbal confirmation. “‘Everything’ being that you want to have sex. With me.”

He did not hesitate before saying, simply, “Yes.”

Yes. She wanted that, too. Hadn’t she always? Or at least for a long time? Hadn’t she wanted him to the exclusion of others—hence her Tinder problem?

“Yes,” he said again, taking his palm from her and laying it on his chest. He sounded . . . devastated.

Yes. The word rose through her consciousness every time he said it.

“I guess now that I’m not married, I’m eligible under your rules of engagement.”

There was a pause before he said, “That’s true.”

“And I’m certainly not trying to entrap you.” She tried to laugh but found she couldn’t get the sound around a lump rising in her throat. What was the matter with her? Max had propositioned her a bunch of times, early in their acquaintance. This wasn’t new. What was new was that she was going to say yes.

There was another pause. “Right.”

“And there will be no lying on either of our parts,” she said. “We both know what this is—and isn’t. So that leaves the rule about doing it on your turf. How do we handle that one? Is your room here sufficient? It’s like a hotel room, right?”

He blinked about a thousand times. “I don’t think that rule matters in this case.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve never had sex with someone I—”

“What?”

“With someone I . . . already trust. With a friend.” He scrunched up his face like he’d tasted something bad.

She smiled. He was so himself, and so dear to her. “And we’d still be friends, right? After?”

“Yes,” he said, so vehemently that it made his voice crack.

“So . . . when do we do this?”

The sour face was replaced by a more familiar grin. “No time like the present?”

And just like that, all the seriousness and intensity of the day, of the moment, was gone, shed like an old skin, and Max was back. She laughed. “We can’t bail on the wedding to go have sex.”

“I’m fairly certain we can do whatever we want, but all right.” He took a step back. “Meet me outside my room when this bloody evening is over. It’s in the northwest wing on the third floor. Do you know where that is?”