Page 64 of Shades of Grey & Gold

He said I had to follow the rules, but not that I had to play fair.

Chapter Twenty

Max

ThecaféonFifthStreet has mismatched chairs and windows that take up the entire front wall. The combination of natural light and the soft yellow glow from tiny table lamps is so cozy.

Cal brought me here three days after we arrived and I sat down, looked around and felt like it was built for me. Or themeI was in college, anyway. It’s the perfect place for a study session and the type of café I would have gravitated towardsduring law school. I have asked to come every morning since, and he has conceded. With Gio and Rudi at the table behind us, of course.

Having to ask to go places is something I’m getting used to in the past week, but I’m working through it. Luckily, Cal was able to get me a laptop to continue working through the Halbrook case the past few days while Peter is running lead. So I haven’t been too bored.

“You look so content,” he says, watching my face.

I wrap both hands around my coffee: hazelnut, mocha, and caramel, of course. I look out the window at the street, at the people walking past with their own coffees, at the way the light hits the brick of the building across the road.

I am so content.

“This is exactly where I would have sat during bar prep. Big window, good light, coffee close enough to refill without having to pack up.” I pause. “If I’d gotten that far.”

Cal says nothing. He doesn’t offer comfort or contradiction, which is one of the things I absolutely adore about him—he doesn’t fill silences with things that aren’t true just to make them easier. He just lets the thing be what it is and sits with it alongside me until I’m ready to talk through it or move on.

I look at the table. I pick up my coffee.

I spent three years of my life working toward something and I let someone talk me out of it in a kitchen in January with cold feet because I wasn’t wearing my fuzzy socks and I was tired. That’s the version of me I don’t let myself look at directly because if I look at it directly, I have to look at all the ways I let Patrick make me smaller and I’m not doing that right now on a Tuesday morning in a café that should have been mine.

I look out the window again instead.

“What are you thinking?” Cal asks as he brushes his fingers over my knuckles.

“That this place has excellent croissants,” I lift mine up and take a bite. “I love them, and I love it here.”

He looks at me for a moment. He knows that’s not what I’m thinking, but he lets it go. I put that in theThings I Lovefile, too.

Sunday dinner at the Renzetti house is not a meal. It’s an event. An experience.

It starts before we get inside because Maggie meets us at the door and kisses me on both cheeks, immediately interrogating me about whether I have any allergies or dietary restrictions. Which would be a normal question if she were asking out of concern and not, as becomes clear approximately fifteen seconds later, because she wants to know if there’s any legitimate reason I can’t eat everything their mother has made before the barrage of smells hit me as we enter the kitchen.

Sophia appears behind her. “She’s already made the sauce, the pasta, thebraciole1, the stuffed artichokes, the—”

“We get it.” Cal puts an arm around my waist and pulls me closer to him.

“Don’t overwhelm her, it’s her first time,” a man’s voice appears from the back door and he’s rolling up a sleeve, looking almost like a carbon copy of Cal, except for his lighter hair color and darker eyes. “I’m Nico,” he says it softly as he approaches me and wraps me in a gentle embrace, kissing both my cheeks just like Maggie. “So happy to be your first… Italian Sunday dinner, that is.”

He pulls back and wags his eyebrows at Cal, clearly trying to egg him on. Cal rolls his eyes and shakes his head, pushing Nico out of the way as he ushers me into the kitchen to sit on a stool at the island.

“She started cooking Friday,” Sophia says over the bickering of Maggie and Nico behind us. “Because she wanted it to be perfect.”

Cal looks at the ceiling, mumbling something about this being a bad idea.

“Because you brought someone home,” Maggie adds in Cal’s direction.

“You are forgetting to mention that she does this often enough, it’s not just because of me or Max,” Cal argues.

“So, Ma only makes braciole when Cal comes home, and barely ever makes meatballs even for me, don’t let him fool you that it isn’t special,” Nico leans across the island and offers me a smile.

“Yeah, Cal won’t admit it because he’s Cal, but he’s the favorite, probably because he’s never home. In fact, that may be the secret. She’s less annoyed at him because he’s never home!” Sophia holds up a wooden spoon like she solved a puzzle.

“I’m literally right here.” Cal frownsat his siblings.