The notion of permanence had always been an elusive specter in Laurent’s world, a mirage dissolving the moment one reached for it. He had spent decades dancing at the periphery of constancy, unmoored by design, slipping through the fingers of sentiment and consequence alike. Yet here he was, discussing matrimony as though the idea did not unsettle him, as though he had not once made a religion of transience.

She had been there when Dorothy perished. Had seen the wreckage of him in the days that followed—the slow, torturous erosion of a man who had never before been made to feel the loss of something irreplaceable. He had been insufferable then, belligerent in his mourning, laughing too loudly, drinking too heavily, as if the sheer audacity of his existence could ward off grief. But she had watched him change. Watched as the sharp edges softened, as time stole the rage from his grief and left something quieter in its place.

“You think I can’t do it?” Laurent’s voice cut through the quiet, velvet-soft yet edged with something unreadable. “You think I’ll wake up one morning and bolt?”

She had not loved him in the way one wished to keep a man. No, her love had been something older, something woven into the very marrow of her existence, like a melody one hums without knowing when they first learned it. And Laurent—brilliant, infuriating Laurent—had never been hers to keep.

They had been on and off in the years since Dorothy’s passing, but nothing had ever carried the gravity of forever. Their entanglements had been nebulous, fleeting, stolen moments between grander schemes. He had never been a man to linger too long in sentiment, nor had she ever expected him to. And yet, here she was, murmuring the absurdity of retirement into the air, never anticipating that he would listen, much less agree.

And certainly not that he would suggest something as unthinkable as marriage. “You know me. I’ll still be impossible. You’ll still call me unbearable.” He paused, looking at her in his own bed, gaze steady. “But marry me.”