He leaned back and took her with him so that she sat on him and he sat on the floor. He made sure to hold her eyes with his. “I don’t know what else it could be.”

“You love me.” It was half question, half disbelief. “You’re sure?”

He tightened his hands around her; he wanted to laugh but could sense the seriousness of the moment. He cast around for a way to explain it. “Via, I’m positive. I’d suspected it for a while, but I knew it the second I walked up to the Botanic Gardens before the wedding. I’ll never forget seeing you in that green dress for the first time. It was like being hit with a hatchet. A clean hit. Right down my center. I got changed from one person into two.”

“What do you mean?”

Well, she was really gonna make him spell it out.

“I mean that before that, everything about me was easy to keep track of. All in one place. And then you happened, and now half of me is walking around in here.” He tapped a heavy finger over her sternum. Like she wouldn’t break. And he knew she wouldn’t.

“Oh, Seb.” She was looking at him now, with such tenderness it almost alarmed him. He was hit with the sudden urge to make sure she understood. Everything.

“I wasn’t a good husband to Cora,” Seb whispered, the words like bitter poison on his tongue. Via was simultaneously the last person he wanted to say this to and the only one he ever could. “But I’m stronger now. Better now. I understand so much more about the world. We’ll figure it out, Violetta. We just have to try together.”

“Seb, I’m in. I’m really, really in for this.”

“Me, too,” he replied hurriedly, the words tripping off his tongue in relief and rising giddiness. “I mean, obviously I am.” He laughed and exhaled and slammed his eyes shut. I’m in. Her words repeated themselves in his head. He held them tight, like gemstones in a fist. He was never letting them go.

VIA’S WETNESS WAS pressed against his underwear and she ached for him. They’d just had each other, and somehow she needed him again, so badly. It was the complicated expression in his eyes that did it. She’d watched him reassure her and awaken a fear of his own all in the same speech. They were two complicated people who were marked by the losses in their lives. But she hadn’t lost Seb. And he hadn’t lost her. They were here together and she wanted to, needed to, show him that.

Via leaned her forehead against his and trailed her hand down his chest. She danced her fingers at the waist of his underwear, and his breathing became jagged. His hips, under hers, pushed up into her and she felt him waking up.

Emboldened by the desire she saw in his eyes, Via slipped her hand into his underwear. He was very large and getting larger. Her breath caught as she pumped him in her hand. But the dang underwear was in the way and she rose up a few irritated inches and jerked them down to the middle of his thighs. He chuckled at the frustrated look on her face, but the laugh died when she sat back on his lap and pumped him again.