Page 87 of Shades of Grey & Gold

He’s in the hallway, leaning against the wall outside the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, watching the remains of his family through the doorway—Carmela and Sophiaat the little table engrossed in playing cards, Maggie asleep in the big chair with a throw blanket over her, Nico at the window talking animatedly into his phone while he eyes Becca, who is making herself an espresso.

I stand next to him. He doesn’t look at me, but he moves slightly, making space, the way he always does, the way that says he knew I would be right next to him. I lean against the wall beside him and our shoulders touch.

“Good night?” he says.

“One of my favorites,” I admit.

And I mean it. Being around him and this family fills me with so much bright, beautiful happiness.

I’ve never been close with my family, parents split up. Dad passed away shortly after that and my mom was busy going from one guy to the next. So, I jumped between grandparents and aunts until I graduated and… well, and then Patrick became family. And we all know how that turned out.

Cal looks at me then. In the low light of the hallway, his eyes are the dark version of golden-green, the color they go when the light is warm. His expression is the open one, the one underneath all the control, the one I spent countless hours with years ago, and the one I can’t wait to spend countless hours with tonight.

“Come on,” he replies, like he’s reading my mind. “Let’s go home.”

And I follow him.

And it is. It is home.

Becca tells us Gio can bring her home, because she is now engaged in an overly competitive game of chess with Nico.

I look around the penthouse when we get back, the reading chair Cal got me in the corner and the coffee station in the kitchen, and the low lights from the city glowing through the balcony doors. And I realize something for sure; the same way I know other things I’ve stopped fighting—the way I know I’m going to finish law school, the way I know Bart has already decided Cal is his second person, the way I know that a blue and gold pen sitting on my nightstand has been pointing at this moment for seven years.

Yeah, I think, pulling the door closed behind me.This is home.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Max

Beccaleftafteranawkward New Year’s Eve where Nico stayed across the penthouse from her at all times. I assumed it was because Cal had a talk with him, but we never discussed it, because all of a sudden I was thrust into prepping for my first week back at law school.

The thing no one tells you about going back to law school after a six-year gap is that the hardest part isn’t the material.

Thematerial is fine. I was in the top third of my class when I left and the law hasn’t changed in ways that make my brain obsolete. I have context now that I didn’t have then—years at Ellison, two years of watching Carla Sellers run a courtroom like she invented it, a few months of working alongside ‘Callan Reed’ on cases that matter—and that context makes the material richer, more three-dimensional, like seeing something in color that you’d only seen in black and white before.

No, the hard part is the small things.

The hard part is standing in the transcript office on the first day while the registrar pulls up my record and takes a long pause before saying everything transferred in cleanly, faster than she would have expected. And trying not to do the math too obviously on what kind of contribution to a library fund would make university administration suddenly very cooperative.

The hard part is finding my seat in my first lecture—Evidence, which I’ve been dreaming about taking since I was twenty years old and reading case law on my own time before I even started the degree. Because I realize very quickly I’m the oldest person in the room by at least four years and exactly nobody cares. Except me.

And the hardest part is how much I love it.

I forgot how much I loved it. I forgot that law school felt like someone finally handing me the instruction manual to a world I’d been trying to navigate on instinct—that I could sit in a lecture and feel my brain lean forward, feel everything sharpen, feel the satisfaction of something fitting into place. I spent years telling myself I missed it but missing and remembering are different things. Missing is an ache at a distance. Walking back into it is—something else. Something glorious and gut-wrenching at the same time.

I sit in Evidence for ninety minutes on a Tuesday morning in January and I take seven pages of notes. I come out into the cold hallway, and I stand there for a moment and I think: I should have done this sooner.

And then I think: I did it exactly when I was supposed to.

My phone buzzes.

And there’s the reason himself.

Cal: how’s the material. be honest.

I look at it for a second, smiling at my phone like a person with no self-control.

Me: insufferably interesting. they assigned Daubert v. Merrell Dow in the first week like it’s nothing