After a minute, all three of my coworkers responded in kind.
“Also true,” Abe smirked. “It’s never boring, that’s for sure.”
“What happens next?” Henry asked.
“Easy,” I said. “We wait for the next book to be stolen. And we get it back.”
53
Henry
I’d barely finished ringing her doorbell before Delilah was pulling it open and leaping into my arms, legs around my waist and face pressed to mine. I dropped the bouquet of lavender I’d brought her and held her tight, mouth in her hair. Time slowed to an ethereal crawl, and then I was kissing Delilah with a dizzying freedom; let our mouths meet in breathless wonder. It was a kiss of sweet new beginnings, of ardent passion. It felt like reading the first chapter of a book you already knew you loved.
“You resigned for me,” she said, our lips still connected.
“You resigned for me.”
I slowly set her down, stepped back to fully take in my warrior. It was an unusually warm spring night, and she was dressed in a pair of ripped, worn jeans and a white tank-top—barefoot, but still adorned with red lipstick. I brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, smiling as she took in my similar outfit. We’d shed our barriers; we weren’t dressed up like undercover agents, or in office wear like private detectives. And we most certainly weren’t the Thornhills.
We were just us.
“Not kissing you today was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life,” I said.
“I think you’ll have to get used to it,” she grinned, biting her lower lip. “But after Abe told us we could keep our jobs, I almost dragged you into my office to have my way with you.”
“I would have liked that very much,” I admitted.
She gave me a playful kiss in response—but we both knew how important it was to guard Abe’s trust right now. Especially since it appeared that we’d both be working at Codex for a long time. But as we’d left the office, I’d grabbed her hand, kissed her wrist, and asked her on our first date. And she’d told me to come here.
“I set something up for you, for our date,” she said, almost shy.
I remembered the crushed lavender and scooped it from the ground, presenting it to her with a flourish.
Delilah inhaled the purple petals. “My favorite scent. How did you know?” she asked.
“I notice a lot of things about you, beautiful,” I replied.
She took my hand at that, leading me up the narrow stairs inside her row home. My first recognition was green. Delilah lived in a veritable greenhouse, with house plants and succulents springing from every surface and shelf.
“Delilah, your house is—”
She turned around, squeezed my hand.
“It’s gorgeous.”
“It makes me feel less homesick,” she said. We passed her kitchen, her living room, and were climbing the third story to her loft-style bedroom, which had the same abundance of plant life. “One of the first weekends I moved back here, my dads and my siblings helped me do this. Spent the weekend making my city house look more like our favorite woods.”
I spied a framed picture on the wall— her dads, smiling on their wedding day. They wore matching suits and the kind of obvious love I recognized on the faces of my parents, my grandparents.
Delilah.
Next to it was Delilah and two other people, arms around each other and laughing at a lake surrounded by trees. “Elizabeth and Max,” she said, “my brother and sister. We spent every day at this lake during the summer until we were sun-drunk and exhausted and the fireflies had come out.”
And next to that, a picture of her dads laughing as they held a smiling baby. “Is that you?”
“That’s the day I was adopted.” Delilah touched the frame lovingly.
There was a punching bag in the corner of her room, hot-pink boxing gloves laying over a chair, and a spiral staircase in the far corner. “Come on up to the roof.”
I followed this woman—my partner, my fake wife, this brave and courageous woman who I would protect at any cost. Delilah was the strongest woman I’d ever met—charging down dark hallways unafraid of what lurked in the corners, only understanding the human desire to keep going.
When we surfaced, it was onto a rooftop garden. Small, but packed with plants and flowering vines and even a tiny tree, growing from a barrel. Delilah had hung string lights from one side to the other, and a small speaker played Etta James. I cocked my head, smile widening when I took in the make-shift dance floor she’d created.
“Delilah Barrett,” I started.
She was standing there, barefoot and beautiful, beckoning me forward. The night air was warm and perfumed with plants, and she was very much at home against a backdrop of leaves.
“I kept thinking about what you said, the night at the museum,” she said. I clasped her to me, cradled her hand at my chest, and our bodies began to sway naturally in time with the languid music. “About your grandparents being devoted to each other, still dancing. About the Thornhills and the romance of a slow dance in their kitchen. I know it’s not the most exciting first date, but I figured we’ve had our fair share of excitement.” She smiled ruefully. “For a few days, at least.”
“I’d like to be the man that wants to dance with you every night,” I said, remembering her admission that none of her romantic partners had ever wanted to in the past.
“I’d like that very, very much.” Delilah ghosted our lips together, staring up at me with wide blue eyes. We swayed like that, content in our silence, our toes brushing together on the dance floor.
“I can’t believe you were going to resign for me,” I said. “Even after everything with—”
But she shook her head. “It’s like you said yesterday morning—Mark can’t take anything from me any longer. And my choices and decisions are free to be mine and mine alone. I wasn’t scared at all. I didn’t know what would come next or where I would work but isn’t that what love is? Excited for whatever comes next?”
“Love?” I whispered. I needed to make sure I heard her correctly.
Delilah kissed me then said, “I love you, Henry Finch. If there had been a hundred guards in that mansion, I would have taken each one of them down to protect you. And if we hadn’t found the Copernicus there, I would have begged Abe to send me out again and again until I found it for you. When I woke up this morning, there was no room for doubt in my heart, only elation.”
The book we’d spent weeks chasing down had only existed because a scientist had stared up into the heart of the big, brilliant Milky Way and wondered if all the theories he’d once held true about the sun were false. Delilah dazzled like the sun now—pulling me toward her brazen trust, her beautiful faith in who we would become. Together.
“I love you, Delilah Barrett.” My voice was rough with emotion. “And I want to be clear about my intentions before we go on our first real date.” She kissed my fingers. “I want to court you. I want to take you on real dates, starting with tonight.” I tucked a wild, raven curl behind her ear. “I want to meet your dads and learn how to climb trees in the woods where you grew up. I want you to come to Sabrina’s Cafe for Sunday brunch with my siblings and argue with my parents about philosophy.”