She woke up at eight to sunlight and his arm around her.

She lay still for a moment and felt the specific quality of a morning after something that had been a long time coming — not the complicated morning after of something that shouldn't have happened, just the warm simple morning after of something that had finally happened and had been right.

His arm tightened slightly. He was awake.

"Morning," he said into her hair.

"Morning," she said.

She turned over and looked at him. Morning Ace — the same as kitchen Ace and balcony Ace and all the other versions she had been cataloguing for three weeks and...