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Despite Devlin’s best efforts to keep her awake, Alicia loses consciousness in the car.

Devlin can see the hospital right ahead of them, and he shakes her gently but with a white-knuckled grip, telling her to hang on, to listen to the man who loves her. But she can’t.

Stuck in a knot of traffic, Devlin swerves to the side and parks in a place that is almost certainly not legal, but he doesn’t care. He leaves the car unlocked and scoops Alicia up, carrying her at as much of a run as he can manage. The weight of her lifeless body feels punitive, as it should: he allowed this to happen. If he’d only been more understanding of her, kinder to her, she wouldn’t have lied to him about having a hangover.

But he can’t think like that now. There’s no time.

“This woman needs help,” Devlin says, as he brings her into the hospital. “She’s been poisoned.” Then he repeats it again, in his middling but passable Portuguese. Two attendants hurry to her and then a stretcher appears from somewhere; her pulse is being taken; information is gathered; she’s being ushered away.

“Are you her husband?” a nurse asks in Portuguese.

He wants to lie and say “yes” — he is beyond caring about truth and decorum, and can’t stand the thought of being parted from her. But he must give them all the information at his disposal, and the truth is that her husband has been poisoning her. They need to know that.

So he tells them.

And she’s taken away from her. Her arm hangs limply off the side of the stretcher — it’s the last he sees of her for hours.

Prescott shows up, and Devlin does his best to remain calm and collected as he delivers his report, but his mind is nowhere except in Alicia’s room as the toxins are drained out of her. He can only hope it’s not too late.

Prescott nods. “Well done, I say,” he says. “She’s a trooper.” He sighs. “I do wish you’d called immediately. By the time we reached the house, everyone had cleared out except the dead bodies of Sebastian and his mother. We could have nabbed all of them if you’d called just a bit sooner.”

“Pardon me, but I was a bit preoccupied with the dying woman in my arms. I won’t apologize for my priorities.”

Prescott is taken aback by his tone, and clears his throat. “Of course,” he says. “Proper care and handling of our operatives is paramount. We wouldn’t want to get a reputation otherwise. It was well done on your part. I was merely musing, that’s all.”

The doctor shows up; despite not being family, Devlin and Prescott have flashed enough credentials to be permitted to receive information about Alicia’s condition.

“She is stable now,” the doctor says. “And she has miscarried.”

Prescott concludes the conversation in his elegant Portuguese while Devlin reels from this proclamation.

Miscarried.

Devlin takes only a moment to process this, and he is most certainly a bastard because he’s glad of it. The thought of Alex Sebastian’s baby growing inside her fills him with rage.

How would you handle it, Devlin, if she hadn’t miscarried? Would you blame her for having Sebastian’s child?

No, of course not, he tells himself, but he thanks whatever higher power there might be that he doesn’t have to find out.

“Poor thing,” Prescott remarks, clucking and tutting as though she’s just had a bit of a rough day instead of being tortured and abused, instead of giving her body to a man she hated…

“That will mean a bit of a delay until her next assignment, then,” Prescott says.

Devlin turns an icy stare on him. “Excuse me?”

“It wouldn’t be my choice — seems risky — but the fellows in Washington think she could be useful for at least one more operation.”

“What, so these men can finish the job of killing her?”

“No… surely not,” Prescott says, affronted. “The assignment will be elsewhere.”

“You think these men won’t be talking to their compatriots who are located ‘elsewhere’? That they won’t make it known that Alicia Sebastian is an American agent?”

“I’m sure they know what they’re doing in D.C.,” Prescott says.

Devlin taps his pack of cigarettes on his palm and removes one, a memory returning.

"Won't you believe in me, Dev? Just a little?" It seems a lifetime ago that Alicia asked him this question. He had no answer at the time, but he vows to himself now that she will never doubt his belief in her again. He must to remember to tell her that.

“I won’t have it,” he tells Prescott.

“Oh really?” Prescott’s tone becomes sterner. “I’m sorry to report that you may not have a say in the matter.”

“Indeed I shall. I’m going to marry her.”

Prescott’s mouth opens, then closes again. He lets his lips turn up in a droll smile. “I see,” he says. “I thought there might have been… but I never guessed it was…”

Devlin looks hard at his superior, waiting for him to express skepticism that “a woman like that” could ever really settle down if it isn’t part of a plot. But if he is thinking anything of the sort, he doesn’t say so.

“Well then,” Prescott says, and nods to him. “Good luck.”

The skepticism is present; Devlin can hear it behind the geniality. But he has no right to challenge the man. After all, hasn’t he himself said as much to Alicia, or nearly so? “You almost had me believing in that little hokey-pokey miracle of yours, that a woman like you could ever change her spots…”  Even after her devoted words and sighs tonight, he has no right to assume she can forgive him for his behavior.

Outside, in between puffs of his cigarette, he bites his lip so hard it bleeds.

Alicia has been awake for hours, and they still haven’t allowed visitors to enter the room. The wait is excruciating. Her doctor tells her that she’s been in and out of consciousness for two days, but hasn’t been able to answer her specific questions about who might or might not be waiting to see her — he’s very busy, of course. She almost wonders if Devlin’s heroic rescue was a dream; maybe it was actually Alex who brought her here, after a change of heart, and she’ll be heading back to his house to continue her stifling existence as his wife. Or worse, maybe he wanted to torture her by curing her and then beginning the poisoning process all over again.

She sits up with difficulty, craning her neck to look out the small window in the door. Nothing; she drops heavily back down on the bed.

She has repeated this process quite a few times when she finally spies a familiar sleek, dark head of hair through the window.

The door opens; the accompanying nurse nods and leaves. Dev stands there for a moment with an unreadable expression on his face, and doesn’t move towards her. Perhaps, she thinks, the distance between them has become too ingrained, and their passionate reunion was a mere fluke.

But then he takes a step toward her, and another. She reaches out a hand and he crumples into the chair next to her bed, taking her hand, kissing it twice, then wrapping it in both his hands and rests his head atop her chest. She feels the glow of a smile creep across her face. “Dev,” she says. “Hello.”

She feels a chuckle dart through his torso, and he lifts his head. “Hello there.”

“I thought you might have been a dream,” she admits.

He shakes his head. “No indeed. I’m quite real, as are you, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Now it’s her turn to chuckle. “Will we speak in platitudes forever, do you think?”

“If that’s what you want.” He settles himself in an upright position, stroking her hair.

“No, Dearest. I want some sensible, sane, plain-spoken words of love to keep my head on straight. You do still love me, yes?”

“I do.”

“That’s nice to hear. If I neglected to say so in the moment, I love you too.”

A hint of pain scampers across his face amidst the misty smile. “Oh,” he says. “I do believe you did neglect to say so.”

She mirrors him, running her hand through his hair, and considers the catastrophic brevity of their initial affair. They hadn’t even taken off a single item of clothing together — it was just a series of sultry kisses and embraces that she’d hoped would lead to the kind of bliss she had only ever dreamed of. Now, when the time is right, they’ll have a real opportunity for bliss in every sense of the word.

There are sober matters to discuss first, however. She lowers her hand. “What’s been happening?” she asks. “I half-expected Prescott to come in with you, ready to talk business. He’s a nice man, but I’m glad it’s just you.”

Devlin, too, stops playing with her hair, but keeps his hand on hers. “Prescott sends his regards,” he says, absently running his finger over her knuckles. There’s an unmistakably acerbic tone in his voice, but he moves on quickly. “Sebastian and his mother are dead. Mathis and Rossner killed them and fled, along with Dr. Anderson.”

Alicia should have anticipated such bluntness from Dev, after the way he told her about her father’s death. She’s shocked — but quickly realizes she shouldn’t be. Of course. The other men would have realized what was happening during that interminable walk down the stairs. Alex couldn’t have looked more guilty. And having an American agent for a wife? An unforgivable offense.

“We’re lucky to have gotten out of there,” Dev remarks almost casually. “They could easily have stopped us along with Sebastian, and killed us all. Got to give him credit for playing along just enough to delay them.”

“Prescott and his friends won’t be happy that the others escaped,” she says.

“Oh, they’ll catch them in time. They can’t have got far, and we’ve got ironclad proof of their guilt now, with your information about the Aimorés Mountains.” He looks at her curiously, presumably waiting to see if she’ll say more about Sebastian’s death.

Alicia feels numb above all else. She opens her mouth to speak, unsure of what will come out. 

“So there will be no divorce,” she says, surprising herself. She hadn’t realized how much she had depended on the vague hope of divorce someday. “I’ll forever be his widow, without the chance to break away from him on my own terms.”

Dev looks down, then back at her. “Yes,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

She sniffs, pulling herself together. “But at least it’s done,” she says. She cannot get a handle on her feelings. This whole time, she’s had to manufacture a form of affection for Alex; otherwise she could not have kept the charade going. At times, she even convinced herself she cared about him a little bit. But now that he’s dead, she feels no sorrow, no remorse. Just a sweeping return of the childish aversion she used to have for him, coupled with a more visceral revulsion that she feels, knowing the kind of regime he was capable of supporting.

Dev gives her some time to process the news in her own way, and she realizes she has news for him as well. She’s not sure how he will respond to it.

“They’ve told me that I… I had a miscarriage.”

Devlin nods slowly. “I know. They told me. Benefits of being a somewhat important cog in the American governmental wheel.”

Alicia huffs out a half-laugh. “Of course they told you,” she said. “I wanted to tell you myself.”

“So you could assess my level of jealousy?”

She won’t lie to him. “That’s part of it.”

He sighs. “My only concern is for your health. I’ll never be like that again, Alicia.”

Alicia nods, but remains wary. She still feels wounded by the stinging barbs he has thrown at her over the past months. She believes he loves her, and that he means well. But she can’t forget immediately, not until she sees some proof of change over time.

He’s still eyeing her, with his own kind of wariness, as though mistrustful of himself. “How do you feel?” he asks.

“I’m okay,” she says. “Relieved, to be honest. I didn’t know I was pregnant, but I knew it had to happen eventually. I wouldn’t have known what to do with Alex’s baby even as his wife, and much less now.” She looks down, then raises her eyelashes to look at him. “And I wouldn’t have wanted to force that upon you.”

Devlin puts on a brave face even though she can tell he’s petrified by the idea. “We would have managed,” he says evenly.

“Would we?” She smiles. She’s not so sure, but she appreciates his efforts. She lets out a shaky breath. “You would have hated the child,” she whispers.

“No… surely I… wouldn’t have…” he stammers.

She looks directly into his eyes. “I might have hated it, too,” she confesses, in a deep voice, unforgiving of herself. “I’m no saint.”

He absorbs this sentiment, nodding slowly, and leans forward. “Sinners both, then. We make a good team.”

She pulls his head toward hers and kisses him soundly, attentively, for quite a long time.

A week later, she leaves the hospital and they settle back into the hotel Alicia stayed at before her marriage; it’s budget-approved, after all. Now that it’s all over, Devlin can’t wrap his head around the word marriage — the whole thing seems like a horrifying dream. And he was only an observer to it; he can only imagine what it feels like to her.

It’s not the same room, but the layout and furniture are quite similar. Alicia heads immediately to the balcony and looks out over the water. He stands a few feet behind her, giving her enough space to think, to accustom herself to freedom.

“What do you really think of me, Dev?” she asks, and then she turns to him. Her eyes are bright and inquisitive, but her face is solemn. “You’ve told me you love me. But I wouldn’t blame you if you ran away. I’m rather a lot to deal with.”

“Are you asking me to run away?”

“Most definitely not. I want to make sure you’re sure.”

Devlin moves a few steps in her direction, coming to rest on the balcony railing next to her; they stand facing each other. “I didn’t tell you this when you were in the hospital,” he says. “Didn’t want to jeopardize your recovery. But Prescott told me the higher-ups wanted you for another assignment after this. I told him the higher-ups can go to hell. And what authority did I have, he asked, to veto the bosses? Why, said I, the authority of a husband, for I planned to marry you.” He inches his hand forward to touch her fingertips. “So you see, my dear, if you back out now, I’ll look quite the fool.”

An expression of shock has passed over her face, now replaced by a flush of gratitude. “Thank you,” she says. “I’ll do what I can for Uncle Sam, but I would say my cover is blown in terms of any sort of undercover assignment.”

“That’s what I told him.” 

“And you defended me immediately?”

“I did,” he says, looking down. He’s about to say more, but she suddenly grasps his hand very tightly. “I need to take my pills,” she says. “The pain… you know.”

Alicia has been prescribed quite a cocktail of medications to counteract the effects of the poisoning and the miscarriage, a one-two blow that Devlin feels is cosmically unfair to her. He ushers her to the couch and sits down next to her, bringing her pill bottles and a glass of water. She selects two pills and throws them back, looking ashen. She leans against his shoulder and steadies her breathing.

“Tell me more about it,” she says weakly.”

Devlin puts a hand on her back and strokes it with his thumb. “Truly, Alicia, I defended you and I’ll do it as many times as I need to. I am aware I didn’t defend you or protect you last time. But never again. Not only are you spoken for, but you’ve been through enough espionage for an entire career — and it was expertly done. You’ve earned your retirement, and my respect.” He pulls back a bit to look down at her. “I’ll never make that mistake again.”

“You’re sure?” she asks. Her color is returning; she is able to keep her head up now, but remains in his arms. “I keep hearing that leopards don’t change their spots. Of course that’s usually in reference to myself.”

He shakes his head; feeling rotten — he spoke those very words to her, of course. “I’ve never been the jealous type. I think I may have gone mad over you, and there’s no excuse. You’ve shown me nothing but loyalty, and I intend now to do the same for you.”

She nods. “I believe you,” she says. “And I believe myself. I don’t think I was ever as much of a tramp at heart as I have behaved, and I don’t think you are really as bitter and possessive as you have behaved.” She pulls away from him now, her face very serious. “I must tell you this once, though, and then I never will again. I need you to understand what it was like for me. Touching him. Being touched by him.” She looks challengingly into his eyes. “Making it seem like I was enjoying it, every single time.”

Devlin feels the fury boiling inside him, but knows he must control it. It’s not her fault, nor is it really Sebastian’s, who thought his wife loved him. Is it his fault, or Prescott’s? More so, to be sure, but he knows that Alicia’s goal is not to make him feel terrible. She simply needs to speak of it, and allows her to conclude: “I can’t imagine, Dev, how you could have thought I didn’t want you instead.”

He nods grimly. “You didn’t deserve any of that. As for my part in it… I regret it deeply.”

She squeezes his hand and draws a shaky breath. “I do understand, though, why I was assigned to that job,” she says. “And it worked. Quite well. I’m proud to have helped. But I’m happy to be done.”

They’ve been dancing on the edges of their old precipice, a deep well of recrimination that could destroy them if they allow themselves to fall into it. But they pull each other back from the brink deftly and with grace.

“Well now. I’m done,” she says. “I won’t torment you with the details again.” She starts to stand up, but he holds her hand and keeps her with him.

“I wish I’d been nicer to you,” he says. “No matter what, I should have been nicer.”

She sighs and brushes his lips with hers. “Be charitable to yourself. Your disdain for me probably helped us sell the story that I couldn’t possibly love you.”

“Kissing you in front of him didn’t help that particular cause.”

“No.” The corners of her mouth turn up amusedly. “But it kept us from being shot.” She closes her eyes for a few moments, then opens them and fastens her gaze on him. “You have no idea what that kiss meant to me. To feel that I was truly loved. I didn’t know if I was kidding myself. But it was wonderful, even if I was pretending.”

“Not pretending,” he says, and draws her close, kissing her lightly. “I’ve loved you since you told me you like party crashers. I would have stayed locked in that kiss outside the wine cellar until kingdom come if I could have.”

He kisses her fully now, and feels his body responding to her in the way that it did the last time they came back to her hotel room, before all of this began. He’d had no reason to think it was all about to end. And now he finally feels it again, knowing with as much certainty as possible that a true physical union between them can happen now.

She releases her lips from his and rests her forehead on his, clasping his shirt with her hands as she catches her breath. “I can’t make love yet,” she says. “They told me I need at least two weeks of recovery.”

Selfish, selfish Devlin. He should have thought of that. He holds her fast, murmuring, “Of course, darling, we’ll take as long as you need,” and chastises himself for not realizing that that would be a possibility. 

She pulls back and looks at him with piercing eyes. “I would,” she says. “I would be with you all night, forever, if I could.”

The anticipation of such a promise is more than enough for Devlin, he reflects, as they change into their nightclothes and sleep in the same bed for the first time, his arms wrapped around her.

Three days later, Alicia feels well enough to venture out into Rio with Devlin. Their relationship continues to amaze her; the conversation comes easily and is lighter in tone than she could have expected. Devlin’s average sentence length is quite a bit shorter than hers, but the ratio seems to work quite nicely. Any silences that fall between them are not awkward, merely thoughtful. But they still haven’t delved very deeply into each other’s pasts, she reflects, and vows to rectify this.

They go to a tiny, slightly seedy coffee shop off the beaten path, to minimize the possibility of encountering anyone who knows Alicia as the high society wife of the mild-mannered German.

“Dev,” she remarks, as she sips her sparkling water, “I barely know anything about you, except that I love you. Tell me about you. Your family, your childhood. Surely you didn’t spring into existence as a fully-formed government agent, like Athena from Zeus’s head.”

He smiles. “Couldn’t I have?”

She pulls a playful face at him. “What’s your name, first off?”

“My name?”

“T.R. Devlin,” she muses, making a meal of the first two letters. “To think I’ve loved you for months and I don’t even know your first name. Unless, of course, you’re like Mr. Truman, whose S stands for nothing at all.”

“My letters stand for things,” Devlin declares, his smile as mysterious as ever.

“Is it even your real name?” She peers at him as though she might find the answer in his brow. “I shouldn’t like to be bothered with learning a false one.”

Now his smile widens ever so slightly. “It is,” he says. Alicia’s heart warms at his concision; he loves her, he shows affection for her, but he will always have a tendency toward the taciturn.

“Very well, then,” she says. “Do tell.”

“Thomas Robert,” he says simply.

“Oh!” she says, and grows a bit forlorn. “Thomas. I do believe I was hoping for Tiberius.”

“And why would that be?”

“I assumed, since you didn’t ever use the name, that it was a name you were ashamed of! And Tiberius would have been so amusing. But in the end, it’s quite ordinary. Charmingly dull.”

“Dull indeed. Stick to calling me Dev, I think.” He stirs his coffee.

“Yes, much more distinctive.” Thomas Robert. She ponders the name. “Although, maybe in the right moments, if I choose them carefully… Thomas…” She cocks her head to the side. “Tom.”

His lips twitch in spite of himself; he likes it. She puts her chin on her hand, elbow resting on the table. “I had rather a crush on Tom Jones as a teenager. I read the whole book — Henry Fielding, you know — when I was thirteen. Have you read it?”

“I haven’t.”

“It’s a thousand pages long and quite scandalous. And I grew rather attached to the name Tom.” She blinks rather more rapidly than necessary, bordering on a coquettish eyelash-flutter. She knows she doesn’t need to seduce him anymore — he’s been thoroughly seduced already. But she likes watching his face melt as she flirts. “There, now. I’ve told you something about me, and I didn’t even plan to. Your turn again.”

He blinks at his steady pace, precisely four times, before he takes a deep breath and says, “Both my parents were killed in an automobile accident when I was four.” He sips his coffee sedately.

She looks at him gravely and takes a sip of water. “When you share, you share.” She sighs, low and long. “Will you be offended if I tell you I assumed something of the sort?”

“Not at all. I imagine I come across as parentless.”

“Indeed you do.” She takes his hand and traces the knuckles. “I’m sorry, darling. It must have been dreadful for poor little Tommy. Do you remember them at all?”

“Only vaguely. I remember my mother feeding me dinner. Chicken and peas. I didn’t like the peas.”

She squeezes his hand harder. “Were you in the car?”

“I was, in fact.”

Again, she is not surprised. “Darling,” she whispers, aching to embrace him, but knowing he doesn’t want or require comfort.

“I’m all right. Have been for quite some time.”

“Of course you are,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “T.R. Devlin is always quite all right.”

He looks quite pensive, and his eyes tell her that he wasn’t “quite all right” during the entirety of her ordeal with Sebastian. She looks down, sorry to have implied otherwise. But he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he returns to the topic at hand. “I’m not opposed to recounting our entire life histories. We probably should, in fact. But will you object if we take it rather slowly?”

“Certainly not. Goodness, I’ve barely begun; you’ve done the heavy lifting for today.”

“Then again, I know quite a bit about your history already,” he says.

Ah. “Having researched me.”

“And spied on you. Just a touch.”

“Spied on. Of course. How could I forget?” She nods, then retracts her hand, folding her arms cheekily over her chest. “When you listened to the recordings of me… did you ever hear me with a lover?”

Devlin’s face would be unreadable by anyone else, but she can discern amusement, a sliver of jealousy, and a healthy dose of arousal, all masked by professional detachment. “Once or twice. We tried to be as decent as possible, but there was always the chance you might have said something important to a lover. So we had to at least… skim through those recordings.”

It should bother her, but she long ago gave up hope that these government agent types had any true sense of propriety. She leans forward challengingly. “Did you ever hear me when I was alone in bed? With only my thoughts and my longings?”

His breath quickens and he doesn’t quite turn red, but bites his lip before answering. “Those nights, we were quite decent about. We skipped ahead.”

She runs a hand idly along a strand of her hair that has come loose. “I know this isn’t possible, but I believe, somehow, that when I touched myself, I was thinking of you. I imagined a mysterious man, dark hair, who came to take me away from the harrowing realities of life. And he kissed me all over, made me weak, made me…” Her breath catches in her throat. “It must have been you.”

They have drifted closer toward each other across the table, and his breathing has quickened to match hers, when the waiter shows up. Devlin asks for the check.

After the waiter leaves, Alicia’s head is in her hand; the moment has passed.

“Are you all right, darling?” he asks.

“Yes. I may have overexerted myself coming out today.” She looks up and, although she feels weak, she can’t help grinning. “It was worth it, though.”

“Let’s get you home,” he says.

Later, as they’re lying in bed, she mutters, “We had so little time together before we were separated. It’s quite cruel.”

Devlin kisses her forehead. “It was one of the best weeks of my life.” He turns her on her side and nestles into her back, with his arm around her. She fits perfectly against his body. “You remember the Museum of Fine Arts?” he asks. “The pigeons outside? You remember the joke you told me?”

“I’d never have believed you could laugh so much.”

“Trust me, it’s a rare occurrence. Or it was, until you.”

It is incredibly hard, that night, to obey the doctor’s orders and refrain from intimacy. But they replace it with conversation, making plans to go somewhere new tomorrow, to see how much more she can make him laugh. She marvels that even with his propensity for reticence, she believes they will never run out of things to say to each other.

Two weeks after the fateful night at Sebastian’s house, Prescott clears them to return to America.

“I suppose I must, mustn't I?” Prescott says to Devlin. “You’ve declared her out of bounds for further assignments, so…”

“She declared herself out of bounds. I’m merely the messenger.”

“The messenger fiancé,” Prescott says, raising his glass of whiskey aloft. “Cheers to you. I wish you both the best.”

Devlin walks away, wondering how much of Prescott’s charm and decorum are genuine, and how much is merely strategic. But he doesn’t care anymore.

They arrange for a marriage license as soon as they land in D.C., and head to the courthouse the next day, with two of Alicia’s friends as witnesses.

“We didn’t think about rings,” she says, as a happy newlywed couple bursts out of the courtroom doors, admiring each other’s ring fingers.

“We’ll get them,” Devlin says unconcernedly. “Being husband and wife is my priority, and once we’ve done that, we can attend to the little things. Speaking of little things,” he says, and pulls a handkerchief out of the pocket inside his suit jacket. She gasps; it’s the black scarf he tied around her waist so long ago, which she returned to him when she thought he hated her. He ties it around her neck, as a jaunty little neckerchief to accompany her sensible cream-colored dress and jacket.

She laughs as she touches the fabric. “It doesn’t go with this outfit.”

“I’m not bothered by it if you’re not.”

“I’m not,” she says. “What do you think?” she asks, turning to her friends Helen and Josephine.

Helen seems baffled; Josephine says, “Well… Black, dear, on your wedding day… And it’s not very formal, is it?”

Alicia shakes her head. “No, it’s not. But I’ve just decided it’s my most prized possession.”

Helen blinks and says in a forced sort of way, “Whatever makes you happy, dear!”

Alicia turns back to Devlin. “It does make me happy,” she says, then whispers, “Thank you, Dev. I’m glad you kept it.”

Devlin doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t tell her how he clutched it to his chest the whole night after she gave it back to him, how he has kept it with him ever since.

“Kemp and Carlisle,” calls the clerk. “Devlin and Huberman, you’re up next.”

Devlin feels lighter and giddier than he remembers feeling since his childhood, before his parents died. Alicia tightens her grip on his hand.

“Daisies and buttercups,” she whispers to him. “A clean slate, do you think?”

He takes her hands, more grateful than ever that she has come into his life and thawed him as much as he is capable of thawing.

He shakes his head. “You don’t need a clean slate. You’re perfect as you are, and as you always have been.”

She looks nervous. “‘Perfect’ is a lot to live up to. What if I’m not perfect?”

“Even better. Then you’ll be just like me.”

She smiles a bit and takes a long breath. “Sinners together, always,” she says. “Promise me?”

“I certainly do. Imperfect sinners, doing our best.”

A few minutes later their names are called; they stand and face the doors.

It occurs to him that he’s neglected an important part of this process — and unlike the search for rings, it cannot be undertaken after the ceremony.

“Alicia,” he says quickly as they walk into the courtroom, “I never truly asked you. Will you marry me?”

She turns pink with pleasure. “Goodness. I hadn’t realized.” She cocks her head saucily. “Let me think about it.”

“Go right ahead. You’ve got about thirty seconds.”

She squeezes his arm as they walk up to the judge, and finally as they turn and face each other, she says, “Yes, I believe I will.”

“Good timing.”

They smirk at each other, and the vows begin.

“Well. Do you enjoy being Mrs. Devlin?” he asks her, when they return home to his apartment after their lunch with the ladies. 

“Much more than I enjoyed being Mrs. Sebastian,” Alicia says, with devout sincerity.

His smile falters. “I haven’t asked you how you feel about this. Marriage in general, after that whole miserable experience.”

Alicia considers this. She knows she should feel something more, something stranger or more disconcerting. But she doesn’t.

“It doesn’t feel like I was married at all,” she says softly. “More like… like I wasn’t myself at all. I spent several months living as a witness to a film that was happening all around me, happening to someone else. Even though I can still feel every moment of it, I can let it go.” She hooks her arms around his neck. “I consider this to be my first and only marriage.”

He kisses her. “What kind of wife do you want to be?”

“Horribly domestic for a time,” she says, not entirely in jest. “Covered in sugar and baking soda, making flower arrangements, rubbing your feet after a long day at the office.”

He chuckles, knowing she can’t keep that up forever, or even for very long. “And after that?”

She feels her eyes and mind travel far away. “I don’t know,” she says. “Truly. I want to use my mind — it’s a very good mind, you know. I’m not sure how yet. But I will find a way.”

“I have no doubt that you will,” he says, and there’s a reverence and respect in his voice that Alicia absolutely cherishes. He kisses her again, and Alicia realizes they are traveling lazily and  languidly toward the bedroom. They sink down onto the bed, kissing and caressing, and end up lying down together with Devlin settled on top of her.

The next time they break apart and lie gazing at each other, she realizes that it has been more than two weeks since she was taken to the hospital, and that she feels quite well. Well enough for…

This line of thought leads her to an important question.

“What do you think about having children, Dev?” she asks. “I should be able to, they said.”

She can tell that he hasn’t thought about this subject much, and she enjoys watching his mental wheels turn as he thinks it over. “They rather come with the territory, don’t they?” he asks. “Marriage, babies…”

“They often do,” she says, “and I want them very much, our own children. But I’d like to take some time just for ourselves first. We still have so much to learn about each other.”

He nods, and kisses her forehead. “That’s a good plan,” he says. “I’d expect nothing less.”

Alicia can feel the evidence of his desire for her straining against her belly, and she wants him more than anything.

“Dev,” she says, “I’m ready.”

His whole body stiffens. “You’re sure? It’s been long enough?”

“Yes. I feel back to normal now. Better than normal, now that I’m Mrs. Devlin.”

“Well then,” he says, and he seems a bit nervous. “Let me… er…” He reaches for the drawer in his bedside table and pulls out a condom.

The process of disrobing and applying the condom is all a bit awkward, as they’re not used to this yet. But when he touches her, enters her, it becomes so intimate that she’s on the verge of tears. She loves him desperately, all the more when he makes her shudder with release and then finds his own climax himself. He grips her shoulders and holds his lips to hers, giving her the lightest, most delicate of kisses as he fumbles for breath.

“Alicia,” he says hoarsely. “I can’t believe you’re real.”

She wraps her arms around him and draws him down so that he’s resting atop her. She doesn’t mind being a little crushed by him; it feels grounding to her.

“I’m real and so are you,” she says in wonder. “It’s all real.”

He raises himself up to look her in the eyes. "Yes," he says gravely. "Yes, it is. And I believe in you."