The Grave Between Us by Tal Bauer

Chapter Two

The conference roomchair creaked as Special Agent Jacob Moore leaned all the way back. Cole was still waiting for one of the chairs in the FBI office to break apart cartoon-style under his weight. Jacob was larger than an NFL linebacker. Cole had never met a bigger man.

Jacob wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin on his sandwich wrapper. “I think Holly and I are going to move in together.”

Noah, midchew, raised both his eyebrows at Jacob. He smiled and swallowed. “That’s great. You guys going to get a new place, or are you moving in with her?”

“I’ll move in with them. Brianna’s settled in there. No need to upend a little kid’s life moving.”

“Yeah, but.” Cole winked. “What about all the construction Holly will need to do? Making all her doorways taller?”

Jacob threw his napkin at Cole. Cole ducked and polished off his sandwich, grinning as Jacob shook his head.

The three of them were finishing lunch, sandwiches from one of Jacob’s favorite delis, in the same room where, eight months earlier, Cole had come face to face with the man who’d captivated him in Vegas and then ghosted him: Special Agent Noah Downing.

He hadn’t known about the agent part in Vegas. He hadn’t been thinking about the FBI that night. He’d been too dazzled by Noah, too enthralled. His heart had gotten away from him sometime between buying Noah a drink and listening to him explain how he wanted to know if what he’d been craving meant that he was gay. Noah had questions, and Cole helped him find answers, all night long. Cole had thought, in the morning, that they were at the beginning of something.

The next evening, Cole spent four hours in the hotel bar, waiting for a call, or a text, or a smoke signal, or a bike messenger, or something, anything, from Noah. But Noah never contacted him.

One week later, he’d walked into this conference room, and there Noah was, leading the investigation into the serial murderer case Cole had been assigned from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

They had a few more stumbles, a few false starts, but by the time they’d put the Coed Killer down, Cole was ready to make Noah—and Noah’s teenage daughter, Katie—his number one priority. Three months later, he put in a transfer request and moved to Des Moines. They bought a house together, figured out how to live day in and day out together, raising Noah’s teenage daughter as they filled in the blanks on their love story.

Cole’s gaze drifted to Noah’s ring finger and the wide band set with three birthstones. It still stunned him sometimes. He hadn’t been looking for a man to spend forever with, but he’d met Noah, and that was that. How quickly he’d imagined a future filled with Noah, and with Katie. How quickly that imagined future became a necessity to him. Noah was the love of his life.

And his boss, now. Since the transfer, he technically worked under Noah, though there were some processes in place to avoid running afoul of fraternization rules.

“Cole, what time are you heading out today?” It was Noah’s turn to lean back. Stretch. Sip from his soda as his foot reached out under the table and brushed against Cole’s.

“About three. That will give me enough time to beat traffic and get to the school.” He was picking up Katie as soon as school let out. Normally, she stayed after for cheer practice, but today, she and Cole had a date at the mall. The winter formal was around the corner, and Katie wanted to go dress shopping.

Noah nodded. “I’ll be on the regional call after two thirty.” The weekly video call with Sam Bray, the Special Agent in Charge of the Omaha office, and all the other agents in charge of the satellite resident agencies, the smaller field offices scattered across Omaha’s area of operations.

“I’ll sneak in for a goodbye kiss.”

Noah’s cheeks flushed, and Cole winked at him. Noah was still getting used to living his life out and proud, but he was doing pretty damn well, considering. Unconditional support from his friends and colleagues helped. Jacob had given Noah the rainbow lanyard Noah wore his ID badge on every day, a match to Cole’s own lanyard. Katie already called Cole her stepfather. And even Lilly, Noah’s ex-wife, seemed to support them. Maybe Noah’s coming out had answered a few questions Lilly had always had, closed a few doors on fears and resentments that had lived deep inside her.

“Jacob, can we review the testimony for tomorrow?” Noah bagged up his and Cole’s trash.

“Sure,” Jacob rumbled. “I need the refresh.”

“This for the deposition?” Cole asked. “The soybean thing?”

“Yes, the illegal soybean blends.” Noah shook his head. “A big change of pace for you, I imagine. From profiling serial killers to agricultural crimes?”

“I have had enough serial killers for one lifetime.” Cole meant his comment to be lighthearted, as much as a comment about murderers could be. His throat seized, though, and he had to force his next words out. “Especially ones in Des Moines.”

Noah’s smile turned soft. His foot hooked around the back of Cole’s calf. “Well, you’re in luck. For the most part, it’s nice and slow around this here part of the country. The only thing Jacob and I were in danger from during this case was boredom. Do you have any idea how tedious it is to investigate eight warehouses and eighty tractor trailers for illegal oat and soy blending? I’m glad the USDA kicked in a handful of agents, or we’d still be searching.”

“Not me,” Jacob said. “I’d have gone headfirst into one of those bean silos, just to make it stop.”

The clench in Cole’s chest relaxed, and he managed a laugh. “I like your risk levels to be about as dangerous as paper cuts.”

“Tedium will get me long before I bleed out from a paper cut.” Noah stretched as he stood. “Ready to dive back into soybeans, Jacob?”

“Lead the way, boss.”

Jacob detoured to his cubicle to grab his padfolio and files as Cole walked Noah back to his office. They lingered briefly in the doorway. They kept things PDA-free at the office, for the most part, but anyone who took a long look at them together could read their body language, Cole thought.

“We’ll probably grab dinner at the mall,” Cole said. “Do you want me to bring you something?”

“No, take your time. Katie’s been looking forward to this. I think she wants some one-on-one time with you, and I don’t want you guys to have to rush home. I’ll pick up drive-through on my way out of here.”

“All right. I’ll text you on our way home.”

Noah nodded. “Don’t forget my goodbye kiss later.”

Cole tugged on the end of Noah’s tie, grinning. “Wouldn’t dream of it, lover.”

* * *

“Oh my God.”Katie’s voice rose behind the curtain. Cole’s eyebrows arched. He stilled, pocketing his phone as his toes bounced to the beat of the hip-hop blasting over the store’s speakers. He and Katie were the only ones in the changing room area, which he was thankful for. The attendant had given him a long look as Katie led him to the back, their arms laden down with dresses.

“Wait there,” Katie had told him, pointing to a chair. “I’ll model for you.”

The attendant seemed ready to set up post and keep an eagle eye on Cole, as if he were planning dastardly deeds in the changing alcove. He’d sat down, casually letting his jacket catch behind his FBI shield, at the same time Katie said, loudly, “It’s okay if my stepdad waits here for me, right?”

They were left alone after that.

He’d waited through four rounds of gowns so far. Long, to-the-floor slinky things, sequined puffballs, glittery trumpets. Each one had been too something. Too much, too little, too over the top, according to Katie. He’d followed her lead, patiently agreeing with each of her assessments. Nothing had been quite right yet. Nothing had felt like Katie.

She sounded excited about this one, though.

Katie flung the curtain back and struck a pose, beaming. A strapless, thigh-high, glittery dress hugged her body, clinging like a second skin. The jaw-dropping look was marred by her messy bun and freshly scrubbed face, as well as her slouched gray socks, still on her feet after she’d kicked off her combat boots and jeans. Those incongruous details were reminders that Katie was only sixteen. Too young, in Cole’s mind, to wear that kind of dress.

But Katie clearly loved it. She spun, arms over her head. “Isn’t it amazing?”

“It’s a bold dress.” His chest ached. He hadn’t even been in Katie’s life for a full year, and he was already feeling nostalgic for the summer, when she’d been just a tad bit younger. “But if we go home with that dress, Noah will fall over and die of a heart attack. And then he’ll come back from the dead to lock you in your room and murder me.”

Katie laughed. “It looks that good, huh?”

He nodded. “I guarantee you, your dad is not ready to see you in that.”

She grinned again, running her hands down her hips. Her shoulders twisted as she gazed at her reflection in the changing room’s mirror. “Okay, but that’s Dad. What do you think?”

Cole rose, leaving his cell phone behind on the chair, and stood behind her. Their eyes met in the mirror. “Here’s what I think,” he said softly. “You’re a beautiful girl, Katie, and you’re going to be a beautiful woman. Nothing you wear will ever change that.”

Katie bit her lip. One foot rose, curling around the calf of her other leg and pushing on the gray sock.

“A dress like this commands attention. I would personally rather see you wear something like this when you’re older. It takes a little bit of life experience to learn how to deal with that kind of attention.”

Katie was still gnawing on her lip. Her gaze had turned questioning, and she peered at Cole for a long moment. “You were on that murder case with the teenagers killed after prom, right?”

Katie, thanks to Google, knew about his work with the BAU. Or, at least, the cases that had been made public. That was only a fraction of what he’d done. The very tip of the iceberg.

“Two couples, after prom. They weren’t murdered because of what they were wearing, though. They were murdered because they intersected with the path of a killer.”

He still remembered the crime scene photos. Long brunette hair splayed out in the surf, the high tide’s foamy reach playing peekaboo with the two girls’ disheveled curls. Sand clung to their faces where they’d been held down and smothered. Red fingernails dug furrows around their bodies, formed by their desperate scratches to escape. The boys had been killed first, and their tuxedo-clad bodies were still rolling in the waves when the police arrived, tumbling up and down like driftwood. The killer had taken his time with the two girls. Pieces of their dresses were scattered around them, glitter and sequins and satin flitting across the gray beach.

They’d only wanted to sneak a bottle of champagne on the moonlit beach after their prom, and they’d had no idea there was a predator living in his car in the parking lot.

There were times when Cole’s memories turned on him, and instead of seeing one of the brunette girls on the sand, or in their body bags, or on the antiseptic steel drawer inside the morgue, he saw Katie. Katie, still as death, the same boneless slump she had when she was sleeping on the couch. Katie, her hair slicked back after a shower like the girls’ hair had been slicked back before the autopsies, their corpses freshly washed.

He breathed out slowly, trying to will his galloping heart to slow. Heat crawled up his arms. A flush shivered down his spine. He tried to smile at Katie in the mirror.

Distance used to be so easy. He’d felt for the victims, and their families, in a sympathetic way. Shaken his head, thinking of their sorrow. Waited, biting his tongue and pressing pause on his questions, mentally counting seconds as victims’ family members choked through their sobs, curling in on themselves as if they could stop their hearts from shattering while they faced the future with the person they loved ripped from their lives.

His fingernails bit into his palms as he tried to imagine a future without Katie or Noah. If they were there one moment and gone the next, and all he had to cling to for the rest of his life was a text about homework or Don’t forget to grab milk on the way home. His guts twisted, tried to rise and strangle his heart.

Katie held his stare. He could see her mind spinning, see her putting pieces together. She’d embraced his world, or as much as she could at sixteen. Her psychology class was her favorite, she said, and she’d asked for psych books and true-crime novels for Christmas. Sometimes she’d blurt out questions about a serial killer or an unsolved murder in the middle of driving to school in the morning. Most days, he was torn between pride and terror for her. She was tiptoeing around the edges of shadows, trying to hold a candle against the darkness. There were things he knew that lived inside that darkness, things he never wanted her to find.

“I had another idea for the dance,” Katie said, breaking eye contact in the mirror. She riffled through the bulging hangers clinging to the hooks on the wall and tugged free an airy, knee-length ditzy floral dress with a high neck and long sleeves, decorated with tea-stained lace and little buttons. It was almost Little House on the Prairie, but the cut was modern, and he could already tell it would look great on her. “What do you think about cowboy boots with this?”

“I think you might need a hat as well. It’s cute. Let’s see it on.”

She grinned and shooed him out, and he went back to his chair. His heart was still pounding. He let out a shaky breath as he swiped on his phone and texted Noah. Hey you. Home safe? He waited, his fingers tapping on the edge of the case, counting the microseconds it took for Noah to reply.

Still at the office. :( Leaving soon. Having fun?

His eyes closed. All good. No threat. He took another breath, and then one more. Typed, Yeah, we are. Hopefully getting close to a decision. Then dinner.

Great. I don’t know if I’m excited or dreading to see what she picks out.He sent an emoji, a yellow face with spirals for eyes.

LOL. I think you’ll survive. ;)

I think I still have an Easter dress from when she was five. Big lace bib, puffy sleeves. I think she had on leggings too. How about that?

“I like this!” Katie called from behind the curtain. “It’s fierce.”

He tucked his phone away as Katie pulled back the curtain and struck another pose, tilting her head to the side, smiling. The dress fit perfectly, and it was sweet and light and charming, dreamy and romantic, wispy and fun. Everything that Katie herself was. “I love it,” he said. “It suits you. That gets my vote for sure.”

She beamed. Spun in a circle and ran her hands over the delicate fabric as it flared around her. “What do you think Dad will say?”

“He will love it.” And, after he told Katie so, Noah would probably hide his misty eyes from her, pretend to do the dishes or wipe down the counters or fold laundry so she couldn’t see his wobbling bottom lip.

“Awesome.” She bounced on the balls of her feet. “You do know this means we need to go get boots now, right?”

Cole laughed.

* * *

Boots acquired—onetawny pair of midcalf cowboy boots, detailed with delicate white stitching—they headed for the food court, and Katie made a beeline for the Panda Express station. They both ordered orange chicken and honey walnut shrimp, then wove through the tables until Cole picked a booth in the corner, his back to the wall, with sightlines to each of the exits and entrances. Katie plopped into her seat and sucked lemonade through her straw, as graceless as a baby giraffe. He shook his head. How she was co-captain of the cheerleading squad, he sometimes couldn’t understand.

“When are we going shopping for the wedding?” Katie asked, shoveling chow mein into her mouth. “Have you guys decided on a theme? Do you know what color dress I’ll be wearing? I’m going to be in it, right?”

Cole froze, his chopsticks hovering in front of him, one shrimp sliding for freedom. It plopped back in the middle of his chow mein as he blinked. “We haven’t really talked much about wedding plans yet.”

“Really?” Katie said around a mouthful of food. She frowned. “’Cause Dad is always looking at wedding stuff. Like, always.”

“He’s what?”

“I needed to look something up, and my laptop was all the way on the table…” Depending on where Katie was, that could be an unimaginable distance of a few feet. “And Dad’s iPad was right there, so I grabbed it. He had all these tabs open. Like, a dozen or more. Pictures of gay weddings, articles about planning gay weddings. He even had Pinterest open. I didn’t even know Dad knew what Pinterest was.”

Cole stared at his plate, poking at his orange chicken as he tried to control his face. Was he smiling? Frowning? He wasn’t sure. His cheeks ached, and he spun the ring he wore on his left ring finger with his thumb. Noah…

He’d tried to ask Noah about his thoughts on their wedding twice. The first time, Noah had looked like a deer about to be run over by a semi, freezing for a full twenty seconds until Cole changed the topic, asking Noah to help with dinner and then teaching him how to panfry the notoriously difficult eggplant. Noah had a second drink that night after dinner, but he’d also made love to Cole with a fevered intensity that had Cole desperately trying to muffle his groans, his gasps that were practically shouts. Lord, he’d hoped Katie had her earphones in that night.

The second time, he asked Noah what he was imagining. Something indoors or out? Large or small? Church ceremony or at-home laid-back style? Noah had said he didn’t know as he unloaded the dishwasher, and then he went to the garage to check the oil in his car, or organize his tool bench, or sort through boxes they had thrown out there after the move. He was, somehow, busy and unavailable to talk for the next eight hours.

For three days, Cole had glanced at Noah’s ring finger every chance he could, checking to see if Noah was still wearing his engagement band. Was his avoidance a sign? Was he going to hand Cole his ring back? Sorry, it just got too real. But, no, the ring stayed on. Cole actually caught Noah playing with it, spinning the ring around and around as he stared off into space, his hands held in front of his heart.

“I’ll have to ask him what he’s found.”

“Shouldn’t you guys be doing that together?”

“You know your dad sometimes keeps his thoughts to himself for a while.”

Katie snorted. She rolled her eyes and popped a piece of chicken into her mouth. “Mm-hmm,” she hummed as she chewed. “Well, what do you want for your wedding?”

He shrugged. Twirled chow mein around his chopsticks. “I’m not sure. A year ago, I never imagined I’d get married. It wasn’t something I ever thought much about.”

“I can see it perfectly. You guys in tuxes, white roses in an arch over your heads. Everyone is there, and everyone’s crying, because you guys are so disgustingly happy. Dad’s definitely crying.” She grinned. “I’ve got an indoor and an outdoor version. Want to hear both?”

Cole’s gaze caught on a man sitting alone across the food court, staring their way as he sucked on the straw in his Sbarro cup. Open-front plaid overshirt, cargo pants, a stained football shirt: the uniform of a hundred thousand middle-aged men from the Midwest. Nothing remarkable about him at all.

Except he was staring at Katie. His eyes lingered on her profile, traced the ski-jump curve of her nose. Followed the wisps of hair that slipped free from the knot on top of her head. He hadn’t blinked in the past twenty-three seconds.

Cole’s heart jackhammered, his knuckles going white as he gripped his chopsticks. He eyeball fucked the man, boring his own stare into the man’s skull. Look at me, asshole. Look at me. Don’t look at her.

The man’s eyes skittered sideways, landing on Cole for a half second before moving on. He stood, grabbed his empty food tray, and headed for the trash cans.

Cole let his breath out slowly. There was a roar in his ears, like the crashing of waves against a pebble beach. Katie’s voice broke through the receding noise, coming at him like he was underwater. He snapped his gaze back as she twisted, staring over her shoulder at the empty table where the man had been.

“What is it?” she asked. “Did you see something?”

“No.” He forced a smile to his face. “No, sorry. I’m sorry. I got distracted.”

Her arched eyebrow called him a liar. But she didn’t press, and she let him pick at his food as his hand trembled.

There was knowledge he wished he didn’t have inside his brain. He’d amassed a library of facts, statistics, case studies, and biographies, all dedicated to the evil people were capable of inflicting on others. He’d dedicated his life to trying to understand how a man went from laying eyes on someone to deciding to wrap his hands around their neck. How the switch flipped in a man’s mind as his gaze traveled the lines of another person’s body. What he thought as his eyes drank in the pretty face of a stranger and a vision of her death bloomed like virus cells growing under a microscope slide. And everything that came after. What pliers did to flesh. The definition of piquerism. What skin looked like from the inside.

He was haunted by the things he knew.

Dirt sliding through his fingers, cold fog sliding into his lungs. A paper crane in the center of his palm—

“Tell me about your wedding plans.” He tried to smile at Katie. “What are you imagining?”

“Okay, so…”

* * *

“Da-ad! We’re home!”Katie called as they came in from the garage. Shopping bags, her duffel, and her backpack bounced off her arms and ricocheted in the doorway. She entered the house with all the grace of an elephant, and Cole stayed well behind, out of the crash zone.

Noah twisted around on the couch, one arm over the back, smiling at them as they walked in. He’d undone the top two buttons on his dress shirt and ditched his tie, and there was a beer bottle on the coffee table. His iPad was in his lap. “How was it?”

“Great! I had to get new shoes, too. Cowboy boots.” Katie dropped all her bags in a heap next to the kitchen table and undid her combat boots, toeing them off and kicking them under the chair. “Then we went to Panda, and then I remembered I needed mascara, so we stopped at Sephora for a minute.”

“More like forty minutes,” Cole said, winking.

“It wasn’t that long!”

“The mall was about to close.”

“Look, Urban Decay just released their new line, and you saw how cool that new Morphe palette is, right? God, that was amazing.”

Noah’s gaze bounced between Katie and Cole, bemusement filling his eyes and turning the corners of his lips up. This was all a foreign language to Noah, Cole knew. Noah tried, he really did, but the one time Katie tried to explain to him why she really, really needed all those makeup brushes and dozens of eye shadow palettes, he’d told her that they all looked the same to him, and Katie had shut her bathroom door in his face.

“It’s amazing how many different variations on a primary color palette they can put out, yes.”

Katie glared. Cole grinned.

“Homework?” Noah asked.

“I did it all during homeroom.” Katie grabbed her shopping bags and her backpack but left her cheer duffel and her boots on the kitchen floor. She headed for the stairs, stopping to kiss the top of her dad’s head over the back of the couch. “Don’t worry, Dad. It’s a good dress.”

Cole grabbed a beer from the fridge and joined Noah on the couch, collapsing beside him with a sigh. Noah took his free hand and threaded their fingers together, laughing softly as he rolled his eyes at Katie’s heavy footfalls upstairs. “How does she sound like a Clydesdale? She’s basically a gymnast. Aren’t they supposed to be light on their feet?”

Cole downed a third of his beer in one long pull and squeezed Noah’s hand. He eyed Noah’s iPad, still facedown, and then set his beer on the coffee table. “Katie tattled on you at dinner tonight, hon.”

Noah’s eyebrows shot up. Cole reached for the iPad, flipping it over and powering on the screen. A flush rose on Noah’s cheekbones. He clenched down on Cole’s hand.

The screen displayed an article about a gay couple’s wedding, from one of those sappy wedding websites. Photos from the extravagant indoor reception, in what appeared to be an opera house, littered every other paragraph, everything from a four-tier cake to a candlelit dance floor to guests wearing Venetian masks. “This doesn’t seem your style,” Cole said softly.

He waited, Noah seemingly frozen beside him. His Adam’s apple bounced like a blade, and his eyes drifted from photo to photo. “No, not really,” Noah finally forced out. “It’s a little heavy.”

“Yeah. The two-story velvet curtains are a bit much. I kind of like the masks, though. That’s fun.” Cole scrolled down, eyeing more photos. “I don’t think I know this many people. They have a lot of guests.”

Noah choked out a single laugh. “I think there’s around twenty people I could invite. Maybe only ten I would really want to be there.”

“Hey, we’ll save on catering costs.”

Noah barked out another tiny laugh. He sighed a moment later. Licked his lips and ran his thumb over the back of Cole’s hand.

“Katie said she found your tabs when she needed to use your iPad. ‘Need’ might be a bit of a stretch. Maybe she was overly curious about what you’ve been looking at so intently. I was curious, too, but I thought you were just reading.”

“I have been.”

“Reading a book, I mean.”

Noah’s gaze slid to the carpet.

“Are you nervous about being married to a man?” Cole asked. “I know you’re not just looking at all this to pick out a color scheme.”

“No,” Noah said quickly. He frowned. “No, I’m not. I’m not afraid of being out. You kissed me in front of the entire Omaha command team today.”

Cole waited. Silence was a potent choice in any interrogation.

“Everyone looks really happy, don’t they?” Noah scrolled through the article, scanning the photos. He flipped to another tab he had open, this time an outdoor wedding. Somewhere sunny, in a meadow, with oak trees and paper lanterns. Two grooms in suits and matching yellow roses on their lapels.

“They are happy. They’re marrying the love of their life.”

Noah flinched, and Cole’s stomach dropped. “I don’t think I was that happy at my wedding to Lilly,” Noah whispered.

Oh.

“Noah—”

Everything Noah had been holding in for two months suddenly came tumbling out, like a river rushing right for Cole. “I wasn’t a very good husband in my last marriage. I tried, but then I stopped trying at some point, and… I feel like I gave up. I was a lousy husband, and I don’t know if that’s because I’m not good at being married, or if there’s something wrong with me, or—”

Cole leaned forward, kissing Noah on the lips and cutting off the flood of his words. “Noah,” he whispered, “there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I don’t want to screw this up,” Noah breathed. “What if I treat you badly? What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.” He took hold of Noah’s face, his fingers sliding into Noah’s dark, ruffled hair. Noah must have run his own hands through it at least a dozen times that night, and the top was fluffy, sticking out in all directions. “Were you happy when I asked you to marry me?”

“Deliriously happy,” Noah whispered. Cole could hear Noah’s smile, feel it spread against his own lips. “For months, I’d just been hoping I wasn’t screwing up so badly that you’d pack up and move back to DC.”

Cole still remembered it, every detail vivid. He’d waited, tucking the two small boxes out of sight until the books and makeup and bottles of whiskey had been unwrapped. Katie was basking in the Christmas morning glow, Noah was fiddling with his new Bluetooth headphones, and Cole got down on one knee and pressed a square box into Noah’s palm. Noah had gone bone white, Katie had screamed, and Cole’s world had sharpened to a pinpoint, nothing mattering but Noah’s face and the feel of his pounding pulse against Cole’s fingers.

“I want forever,” he’d whispered. “Forever with you. Marry me, Noah?”

Noah couldn’t say yes fast enough, it seemed, tearing into the wrapping paper and then freezing when he saw the ring with their three birthstones. Katie cried, and then really cried when Cole gave her a matching necklace. He pulled out a second ring from his jeans pocket after sliding Noah’s ring on his finger, and he asked Noah to put it on his own hand. Noah’s hands shook so much he almost slid the ring onto Cole’s middle finger twice.

“Are you sure I’m what you want?” Noah whispered again. “Cole, I’m…” His face scrunched up, and he held his breath.

“You’re perfect for me.” Cole kissed him. “You’re the man I love.” And again. “You’re the man I want to be with forever.” A third kiss. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Noah sagged into him, leaning his forehead against Cole’s. They sat in silence, holding hands. “What do you imagine for our wedding?” Noah finally asked.

“I don’t know. I never daydreamed about marrying anyone. It was never a fantasy of mine. You’re the only person I’ve ever thought of marrying.”

Noah flushed again. Cole smiled. “All I want is to share the rest of my life with you. I want you to know I’m in this forever. For keeps. I want to be with you. Marriage is one way to show that. Staying together is another.” He dragged his thumbs across Noah’s cheekbones, massaged his temples in slow circles. “If you’re not ready, that’s fine. There are a lot of varieties of commitment. There isn’t one single answer that’s right for everyone.”

Noah was quiet. “I’d like to call you my husband. I like how that sounds. I like how it feels, too.”

“I like it, too. Dr. Downing has a nice ring to it.”

“You’d change your name?”

“I’d like to. If that’s okay with you.”

“Of course it’s okay, but… why? You’re published under your own name—”

“So are a lot of women when they get married. It’s not a problem for me. And I want to be a part of this family.” It was Cole’s turn to whisper, for his voice to drop.

“You are. Your name doesn’t change that.”

“I know.” He kissed Noah, sweetly. “But I’d like to be your Cole Downing.”

Noah smiled, slow and wide. “I’d like that.”

They stared at each other, gazing into each other’s eyes like lovestruck fools. Cole felt his heart skip a beat, pitter-patter inside him. I love this man so much. “And outdoors.”

Noah frowned.

“I want an outdoor wedding. I like the idea of dancing under the stars with you. And I like how you look when the sun hits your hair. When it catches your eyes.”

Noah squeezed his hand so hard it hurt. “Outdoors it is.”