Chapter 34: Sunday eggs

Bruno made coffee before I was fully awake.

I heard it from the bedroom and lay on my back and looked at the ceiling and did not move because moving would end it and I was not ready for it to end.

He came in with two cups and sat on the edge of the bed and held one out. I took it with both hands and sat up and we drank without talking and outside the long window the sky was doing something pale and gold that it only does for twenty minutes before it becomes ordinary daylight.

"The view," I said.

"Told you," he said.

I looked at it. Rooftops and a strip of river between two buildings and the sky coming in low and warm over all of it.

"I want to paint this," I said.

"Then paint it."

"I haven't painted in four years."

"That's not a reason," he said. "That's a gap."

I looked at him sitting beside me with his coffee and his bare feet and his shirt from yesterday and his hair not yet sorted and thought this was the most human I had ever seen him and I liked it more than any other version.

"You look different here," I said.

"Different how?"

"Like yourself," I said.

He looked at me over his cup. "Is that good?"

"Very good," I said.

He took both cups and set them on the nightstand and came back and sat facing me and took my face in his hands.

"Last night was a lot," he said.

"Yes."

"More coming. The court document. Reeves. Sara." He held my gaze. "None of that changes anything on my end."

"Bruno"

"I've spent four months moving fast and alone and not trusting anyone," he said. "It worked well enough but it was a bad way to live." He looked at me. "I'm not doing it that way anymore."

"Neither am I," I said.

He kissed me and I put my hands against his chest and kissed him back and the morning light came through the long window and lay across the bed and the coffee went cold on the nightstand and neither of us cared.

Later he made eggs.

I sat on the counter because that was where I wanted to sit and he moved around me without complaint and handed me a fork and we ate from the same pan in the kitchen with the city doing its loud Monday things on the street below.

"Lisbon," I said.

"Six days," he said.

"I want to find the studio before we go. So we know it's there."

"We can do that today," he said. "After the lawyers."

I watched him rinse the pan and dry his hands and turn and lean against the sink looking at me with his arms crossed and that expression he had. The quiet specific one.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "I'm just looking."

"You look a lot."

"You're worth looking at," he said.

Heat moved up my face and I looked down at my coffee and he crossed the kitchen and lifted my chin with two fingers.

"Don't do that," he said.

"Do what?"

"Look away from good things," he said. "You've been doing it for years. Stop."

I looked at him.

He was right and we both knew it and the kitchen was warm and the morning was outside and the eggs were gone and there was nowhere either of us needed to be for two more hours.

He kissed me slower this time and I put my arms around his neck and he lifted me off the counter and I laughed against his mouth. An actual laugh, unplanned and real, the kind that comes from somewhere you forgot existed.

He pulled back and looked at me.

"There it is," he said.

"There what is?"

"That laugh," he said. "I've been waiting for that one."

I shook my head at him and he set me down and took my hand and we went back to the window with our coffees and stood looking at the rooftops and the river and the sky that had deepened into proper blue.

"Bruno," I said.

"Yes."

"When we get back from Lisbon." I looked at him. "I don't want to keep separate apartments."

He turned to look at me.

"I looked at a building two weeks ago," he said. "Two floors. Good light. A room that could be a studio."

I stared at him. "You looked at a building."

"I didn't say anything because I didn't want to get ahead of myself."

"You booked a hotel in case the night ran long," I said. "That's not a man who gets ahead of himself."

"I wanted to make sure you'd say yes first," he said.

I put my coffee down and turned to face him properly.

"Yes," I said.

He pulled me in by the hand and kissed me and outside the window the city carried on with its morning and the river caught the light and somewhere below us a door opened and shut and a child's voice rose and faded and all of it was ordinary and good and mine.

We stood like that for a long time.

Then Bruno stepped back and looked at me with something new in his face. Not the composed careful look. Not the professional steadiness. Something open and unguarded that he had not worn in any room with other people.

"I have to tell you something," he said.

"Tell me."

He was quiet for three seconds.

"My brother called me this morning," he said. "Before you woke up from the detention facility."

"He told me why he did it," Bruno said. "Why he put Harlan in front of me. Why he took Richard's money." He looked at the window. "He told me Richard has something on him. Something old. Something that has nothing to do with Monaco."

"What does Richard have?" I said.

Bruno looked at me.

"A recording," he said. "From eight years ago. The night our father died."

He was quiet after that.

I didn’t fill the silence either.

The coffee in my hand had gone cold again. I set it down and waited because I knew if I pushed, he’d shut it down.

“Eight years ago,” I said finally.

He nodded once.

“The night he died,” he said. “I was there. You know that. But there were five minutes before the ambulance came where it was just him and me.”

I looked at him.

“He said something,” Bruno said. “I thought he was rambling. I thought it was the pain.”

“What did he say?”

“That Richard had been right all along,” he said. “About the company or about me.”

“He said I was going to ruin it the same way he did,” Bruno said. “And that I’d do it by trusting the wrong people.”

“And Richard recorded it?” I said.

Bruno nodded.

“He’s been holding it since,” he said. “Waiting for the right moment. My brother thinks he’s going to use it now. To make me back off. To make me choose between the company and you.”

I looked at him and he looked back.

“So choose,” I said.

He didn’t answer right away.

Then he reached out and took my hand off the counter and held it like he wasn’t planning to let go.

“I already did,” he said.