Page 86 of Orc'd At A Wedding

At the bottom of the steps, he draws me off the pavement and into the quiet of a broad stone alcove, out of the wind, and I turn to face him. He is backlit by the street beyond, the city light catching the silver of his eyes, and he looks at me with that focused, unhurried attention that I once found unnerving and now find is the most grounding thing I have ever experienced.

He straightens my coat lapel, which is already straight.

"Did the evening meet your expectations?" he asks.

I laugh, the sound bouncing off the stone.

"Olog."

"It is a reasonable operational debrief."

"My aunt left two hours early. My father apologised to you and then ate his feelings in the form of miniature pastries. My mother told me my dress was lovely, which is the first time she has complimented my appearance since the summer of 2019." I count these off on my fingers, looking up at him. "Susan hasn't texted the family group chat a single critical word, which is unprecedented in recorded history. So yes. Yes, I would say it met my expectations."

He considers this.

"Good."

"Very good," I say. "Exceptional, actually. Five stars."

"The contract has been voided," he says. "Reviews are no longer applicable."

I step closer, tipping my head back. "Then consider it a personal recommendation."

His hands come to my waist, warm through the fabric of my coat, and he looks down at me with an appearance that is not quite smiling and is more than smiling, is something that lives past what smiling can hold.

"I don't require a rating," he whispers.

"I know." I reach up and curl my fingers into his lapel. "But you're getting one anyway. Because you showed up in that hotel lobby in the best suit I've ever seen and you introduced yourself to my ex-boyfriend like you were filing a police report, and you slept on the floor of a luxury suite because you were taking the professional ethics of a gig-work fake boyfriend arrangement completely seriously, and you stepped in front of a glass of red wine to protect a silk dress, and you got down on one knee in a car park and offered me a throwing knife."

"It is a traditional?—"

"I know what it is." I pull his lapel gently and he comes down to me, his forehead dropping to mine, his breath warm. "And I'm keeping the knife forever, and I am keeping you forever, and so for the rest of your life, every single day, you are getting five stars."

He makes a low sound in his chest.

"That is a logistically unsustainable rating," he murmurs. "Standards require comparative?—"

I kiss him.

He stops talking.

His arms come around me properly, both of them, encompassing and warm and certain, and he kisses me back the way he does everything, with his complete and undivided attention, with no part of him somewhere else, and the city goes on around us in its entirely unimpressed way, and I don't notice it at all.

When we separate, my heart is doing its specific Olog thing, the one I have stopped trying to regulate.

"Take me home," I tell him.

"Yes," he says.

He takes my shoes from my hand without being asked, tucks them under one arm, and opens the car door, and I slide in, and he rounds the car, and when he gets in beside me, filling thedriver's seat the way he fills every room, he rests his hand on the centre console with his palm open.

I put my hand in his.

He closes it.

We drive home.