Kelsey The stage door is a fire exit that opens onto a narrow strip of sidewalk between two buildings. I push the door open with my hip because my bag is on one shoulder and my tap shoes are slung over the other. There are sometimes people out there wanting autographs on their playbills, but tonight it’s raining. Not a dramatic rain, just the steady low-key kind that makes everything smell like wet concrete and exhaust. Francine and Mia come after me. Mia pops open her umbrella. “Wait here!” She goes out to check the street for our Uber while Francine and I wait under the overhang, out of the rain. And suddenly Bruno’s standing there, and my heart leaps. He’s soaked through. His hair is dark in the rain, barely a hint of the golden brown. The wild little cowlick is probably flat. An unopened umbrella dangles from his wrist. “Bruno, what are you doing?” “I need to talk with you.” Mia’s back, and she and Francine watch me, waiting, ready to drag me off or flip their bitch switches or whatever else. “Uber’s out there,” Mia says. I try not to look directly into his eyes, because I might not have strength then. He had me investigated. He dumped me without explanation. He’s not worth it! “We’ve got nothing to say, Bruno.” I head for the waiting car. Mia and Francine follow. We pile in the back and shut the door. The rain drums hard on the top of the car. “We’ll drop you first,” Mia says. She leans up and gives the grizzled old Uber driver the address. “Yeah, just as soon as this lunatic gets out of here.” He honks his horn a few times. “It’s Bruno!” Francine says. “What’s he doing?” “You know this guy? Is he dangerous?” “No,” I say. “But she doesn’t want to talk to him,” Mia says. “He was a jerk to her.” “Can’t you back out?” I ask. “Or just go around him?” “No room.” He rolls down his window. “Hey, you! Get the hell out of there!” “I need to talk to her,” Bruno yells. “Why does he want to talk to me so badly?” I say, feeling like maybe I want to hear what he has to say. “Bruno usually isn’t impulsive like this.” “Can’t you go up on the sidewalk?” Mia says. “Two minutes,” Bruno says. “Please. It’s important.” My pulse races. “He’s just out there getting drenched.” “Good,” Francine says. “Builds character.” “Look, this guy needs to move out of the way, or you ladies need to get out,” the driver says. “Maybe I should hear him out,” I say. Mia turns to me. “Do you feel like you should hear him out, or do you actually want to hear him out? Because if it’s just that you should, we’re not letting you out of the car.” Francine leans forward. “Driver, do you have a child-lock thing up there?” “Not doin’ that,” the driver growls. “I want to hear him out.” Mia and Francine look at each other. “We’ll wait.” The driver grumbles as I pull up the hood of my poncho and get out onto the sidewalk. “What the hell, Bruno!”
Not worth it, not worth it, I remind myself. My blood races. “Come under here.” I pull him under the overhang. I’m not ready for the feel of him near me again. How natural and good it feels. “I am so sorry, Kelsey. I panicked. I panicked and I couldn’t think of anything else...” His voice breaks slightly. “I... I thought you were in danger.” I’ve never heard Bruno stammer before. “In danger of what?” “Me! In danger of me!” “Bruno—why?” “You were there, didn’t you hear how my mother described my father? The strict, obsessive silence he demanded? The fanatical control because he needed everything perfect? How he suppressed life around him—doesn’t that remind you of somebody?” “I see where you’re going, but that’s so simplistic.” “It felt like she was telling me the future. It felt like she was telling me your future if you stayed with me. And I love you, and I couldn’t bear the thought, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.” The ground beneath me seems to tilt. “So you dumped me?” “I know. I was panicking. I told myself to end it in one clean move. And then the r eport... listen, whether you ever take me back or not, I need you to know that using that r eport to make you think I didn’t trust you was a terrible thing. I never ordered it because I didn’t trust you. I ordered it because I did trust you.” “I don’t get it.” He fixes his gray gaze on me, brows perfectly level with concentration. “I ordered it that day in the hotel bar, right after you told me about the tiara. I wanted to punish your family for what they were doing to you.” “That’s why you ordered it?” “Yes. Later I understood why you wouldn’t care about an investigation or ever even want one. I reached out to nix it, but as it turned out, the thing was already complete. I told Sadie to trash it. But she’s a digital hoarder. So I reached out after New Mexico. I convinced myself that it was the kindest thing. A totally clean break. So you’d have no doubt of the monster I am.” “It wasn’t kind at all! How could you do that?” “I wasn’t thinking. Whatever happens, know that I see you. I see your beautiful heart and your wild embrace of life and your... Just everything. I even love your embodiments. I look at that picture sometimes. Remember the picture I took on the veranda? At the hotel?” My heart skips a beat. He sits around looking at that picture? “Bruno. I mean, of all the pictures...” “I love that one.” The rain splashes down around us, catching the streetlights, bright against the gloom. “You’re not like your father. You know that’s ridiculous, right?” “You’ll be happy to know that my brothers agree with you one hundred percent on the ridiculous part. Though their words were less kind.” “You went and talked to your brothers? Did you tell them about your mother?” “Of course I did. They deserve to know. You were right about that.” The Uber horn honks. I hold up a finger. “How’d they take it?” He gives me the outlines of their meeting. “Wow,” I say. “Good for you.” “Good for me? No. That was you.” “Was it hard?” “It was. They were pissed. But I needed to do it. You showed me how to move through life with trust instead of armor and control. You showed me that love is real and not a scam or a performance. You changed my entire world.” He gazes into my eyes, his face wet from the rain. “You are the love of my life.”
You’re mine, too, I think. I hug my arms around myself. “I would do anything to have another chance,” he says. “I don’t want to be without you.” I look up at him. I want to jump into his arms and kiss the rain off his face and walk everywhere together like old times and then snuggle into bed together. “You didn’t communicate with me. You just made this decision for us. I can’t have that.” “I know. I heard you, and the last thing I wanted to do is put pressure on you with your friends there... glaring out the window. I want you to know that I will be waiting for you. I will always wait for you.” Is it too impulsive to say, “fuck it” and take him back, just like that? As if everything can r epair? This is a man who spent his whole life locking things down, controlling his world down to the millisecond. He wants to change, but will he? I look over at the Uber. The rain is coming down in sheets, now. “I need to think about this.” “Of course. Here—this rain is crazy.” He pulls at his umbrella and opens it above me. That’s when I see the flash of red. It’s a watchband. A red watchband on his wrist. “What the hell is that on your wrist?” I grab his coat sleeve, and there it is. The Roadrunner watch. “What are you doing wearing this?” He seems unhappy that I noticed it. “I don’t know. I just... wanted to.” “The overlord of time and all watches? Wants to wear the abomination that... what did you say? It’s against everything you stand for? A symbol of disorder, a disregard for time itself? What happened to your North Star? Your life’s goal of making the perfect watch ke ep exact time forever and ever?” “That was a goal I created to survive childhood, to give me the illusion that I could impose order on an unpredictable world. That’s not my goal anymore.” My pulse races. I touch the side of his face, stopping the roll of a rain drip. “What’s your goal now?” “It’s all a work in progress.” I look at the poor Roadrunner, frozen in mid-sprint, running after something he’ll never quite catch. “It must plague you to wear that thing.” His eyes meet mine. “Every time I check it.” I feel a smile split my face. “But I like how it reminds me to let go of everything I was trying to lock down. I like how it reminds me to be okay with a little bit of disorder. I don’t have to control time. I have two brothers and a mother, and people who have my back, and for a while I had you, and I know now that that’s what’s valuable.” He pauses. Takes a breath. Then, more quietly, “And obviously it reminds me of you. How I felt when I still had you.” “Had me? No.” I pull him to me. “You still have me,” I say into a kiss. “Kelsey,” he says in a great gust of emotion. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you so much.” He tips his forehead against mine. I say, “You are such a geode, so surprising inside.” He cradles my face like it’s the most precious thing on the planet. “You fucking light my world.”
Epilogue Bruno Theo stands across the bench from me, and his sister, Willow, stands at the second bench, running the spectrograph data on her laptop. They came into my life through Kelsey, the way so many things have, lately. “Second-pass surface density is up four points,” she says, not looking up. “You two are about to argue about the microns.” “We already did,” Theo says. She grins. “And?” “Bruno’s updating his priors,” Theo says. “I’m updating your priors,” I say. “Hah,” Theo says. “Look, if we bring the temperature down two degrees on the second pass, we get better surface density without compromising the flex.” “We lose three microns,” I say. “We can afford three microns, now,” Theo says. I take a look. “This is great news. We could have it on the next pass.” Theo rubs his hands. The thing I like about working with Theo and Willow is that they operate like scientists, changing their minds when the evidence changes, and we learn things from each other when we argue. I never saw the downside of working alone all these years. Of being alone. But here I am, in my workshop with two other people who belong here. “Hey!” Kelsey leans in the doorway. She’s wearing a crushed velvet minidress—de ep orange—with her favorite boots. Big silver earrings set off her dark curls. Behind her, Mia has both hands braced on the doorframe overhead, doing a casual hang as if waiting for a bus. Antonio is behind her, holding two glasses of champagne, apparently one of which is for himself. “Nerds of the world,” Kelsey says. “I regret to inform you that you’re about to miss the cake.” “Phillip made it,” Mia adds. I can hear it now—the deck above us, voices, laughter. Annie’s voice carrying over someone else’s. I’ve had this yacht for eleven years. I can count on one hand the number of times the deck has sounded like that. The three of us had come down here after a discussion over an hour ago. Our idea was just to test out a theory, but things e volved. “Five minutes,” I say. “You’ve been saying five minutes for forty minutes,” Kelsey says. She looks at Willow. “He doesn’t own a clock, which is ironic.” “He owns hundreds of clocks,” Theo says. “Tiny clocks.” “Ask him the difference between clocks and watches but wait until you’re both back down on deck eating cake.” She gives me her best innocent face. I give her nothing back, which she’s long since learned to read as I see what you’re doing. Her dimples de epen. “Five minutes,” I say again. “Actually this time.” The three of us make a plan to resume the project in the upcoming week. That sort of thing is possible these days because my yacht is docked at Chelsea Piers Marina. I spent eleven years as an island, but now I’m more like a peninsula jutting off the west side, being tied up here. You can walk from the boat straight onto the street, and the
view is great. When I look east, there’s Manhattan rising up, all glass and steel. On the other side is the Hudson River, with its expanse of water and sky, and New Jersey on the other side. “They made it!” Kelsey jumps up from a lounger and comes to me as we st ep onto the brightly lit aft deck, where a full two-dozen friends are gathered across the seating areas that are in no way perpendicular to each other. People have been laughing and talking and hanging out on this warm October night. Even my brothers have shown up. There’s a whole spread of finger foods on the bar. Phillip has absolutely outdone himself in terms of creativity. It’s Kelsey’s and my four-month anniversary, “which is as good a reason as any for a party,” she said. She sets me up with a cocktail, and suddenly Mc Gillicuddy is coming out with a large rectangular cake. “Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting,” Mc Gillicuddy announces as she sets it down on the bar. Annie sets out plates and napkins. People gather around. What’s remarkable about the cake is not the fact that it’s carrot cake, it’s the recreation—in frosting—of the HEART YOU, CHUMPYWUMPY banner, done in intricate detail. “Phillip!” Kelsey screams. “What have you done?” Phillip comes out looking she epish and proud. “I took some creative liberties.” I say, “Just so everyone knows, that isn’t what we call each other.” “It’s not,” Kelsey says. Not everybody knows the story behind it. It’s my brother Adrian’s favorite story to tell. He’s so deadpan and serious about it. He has everybody laughing. “My serious, lone-wolf brother suddenly decorating his yacht with banners and teddy bears,” he grumbles. “I was like, mistakes were made, but we can sell this to Adrian,” Kelsey says. I wrap an arm over her shoulder. “That was the first time I really understood how strong you are. What a warrior you are. And what it is like to have a partner to rely on.” Annie and Phillip cut the cake. Kelsey eats her slice with the focused pleasure she brings to all food. I stand next to her and think, I would have missed this. Not the party. This whole new life. I was entirely pr epared to miss all of it if I could just get the watches more accurate. As if that would be worth it. I’ve never had so many people on the yacht. And that they are all more or less people that I could count on in a pinch. Kelsey’s world has a quality of abundance that still sometimes startles me. Max, ever the entertainment entr epreneur, has been talking to my brothers about events out at the vineyard. Some of the guys have been wondering if we can fish from the boat. Lizzie has brought frosted yacht cookies. At some point, Mia and Kelsey and Antonio hop up onto the bar and begin singing something from the show, Antonio doing something theatrical with his champagne glass as a prop. People clap along. The festivities are winding down later. Kelsey’s friend Vicky with the dog named Smuckers asks if her family’s come to see the show yet. “They came.” Kelsey settles back against the railing. “I saw them at intermission. It was—” A small pause. “It was... fine.”
The tiara secret unraveled a few weeks back, the way these things do when a private investigator has been asking questions. Secrets began to slip out; time tends to loosen people’s lips far more than anything else. Somebody mentioned something to the wrong person and the secret traveled the gossip chain to Kelsey’s mother. Meredith had stripped the stones and sold them s eparately. Her mother called a few weeks back. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it afterward, and I know what it costs a woman like Gabrielle Winters to make a call like that, and I know what it cost Kelsey to receive it with the grace she did. It was more than that woman deserved. “They want me to come for Christmas.” Vicky hands the little dog to her man, Henry. “And?” Kelsey turns her champagne glass slowly. The maraschino cherry rolls around at the bottom. “Honestly, I’m not interested—not this year, at least. We’re going to Newport.” Her eyes find mine. “Bruno’s mother, Loretta, is moving out there; she’s going to help Russell with the winery and the events. First Christmas all together in forever.” “That’s the one you want to be at,” Vicky says simply. People leave in groups. Eventually the deck is quiet, the glasses cleared. “Helipad?” Kelsey says. I grab a blanket. I hand it to her when she reaches the top. We bundle up together. The sun is setting over New Jersey, going orange and then red and then a dusky salmon gray. We huddle together watching. She leans back against me. I put my arm around her. I can feel her fingers on my forearm. They stop at the Roadrunner watch. “You don’t have to ke ep wearing this,” she says. “Why not? I love how it baffles people. Especially in the watch world.” She laughs and tips her head back. “You put it on as a reminder, but now we’re creating this life. I feel like the life all around us is the reminder, now. Plus, it’s mine, if you recall. I picked it out for myself. I mean, with this outfit?” “I don’t want to ever forget to be like this, though,” I say. “That’s what we have each other for.” She works at the buckle. “How wrong is this watch at this point?” “So wrong.” She puts it on her own wrist and holds it out. “Perfect.” HEART-EYES AHOY! Thank you for reading!! I hope you enjoyed Bruno and Kelsey as much as I did. But wait... what about Wulfric and Lola? Will Lola be safe from her awful ex? Will Wulfric find out about her engagement cosplay? That book is coming this fall... preorder now!! Don’t miss Lola and Wulfric: Out in October!!