Chapter 15: The Skeptic Returns (Continued)

"No." He pulled her closer. "I shouldn't. I spent my whole life caring about the wrong things. Precision. Distance. Being right. I don't want to be right anymore if it means being far from you."

Wren went very still. "Marcus."

"I'm choosing you. Not because you're a witch. Not because you're interesting. Because you're Wren, and because when I'm with you I stop wanting to be the person who knows everything."

Her eyes were bright. "That's a very dramatic speech for someone who claims to be bad with words."

"I'm improvising."

"It's working." She rose onto her toes and kissed him. It was brief, fierce, the kiss of two people who had just been reminded that the world outside was not always kind. "Now help me figure out what to do about Daniel Reese."

They sat at the kitchen table and made a plan. Wren would email her lawyer. Marcus would call David and make it clear, in language David would understand, that sharing personal information about colleagues was a violation of professional trust. They would document Daniel's visit. They would not hide, because hiding looked like guilt.

"And if he writes the story?" Marcus asked.

"Then we let him write it. And we keep living our lives." Wren reached across the table and took his hand. "The thing about people like Daniel is that they need a reaction. They need you to perform. If we don't perform, the story dies."

"You're very calm about this."

"I'm not calm. I'm strategic." She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. "I'll panic later, when you're not looking."

"I want to be looking."

"No, you don't. My panic is not attractive. It involves eating cold pasta and reorganizing jars alphabetically."

"That sounds exactly like something I would find attractive."

Wren laughed, and some of the tension in the room dissipated. "You are a strange man, Marcus Cole."

"I'm your strange man."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Yes," she said. "You are."

That night, Marcus did not go back to his apartment. He stayed with Wren, sitting up late while she answered her lawyer's questions and drafted a careful, firm email to Daniel Reese. He made her tea. He rubbed her shoulders when the stress made them tight. When she finally set her phone down and said, "I hate this," he pulled her onto the couch and held her until she stopped shaking.

"It'll be okay," he said.

"You don't know that."

"No. But I'm choosing to believe it."

Wren lifted her head from his shoulder. "Is that what faith feels like?"

"I think so."

"It's terrifying."

"Yes." He kissed her forehead. "But you're here. So it's manageable."

She settled back against him. Outside, the brownstone was quiet. The threshold charm hung on the door, faint and steady, holding the boundary between Wren's world and the street. Marcus thought about Daniel Reese and all the people like him—people who needed to tear things down to understand them—and he felt a strange, fierce gratitude that Wren had taught him another way.

He did not sleep much that night. But he did not leave.