Page 59 of You, Only You

"Okay," I echoed.

He pulled me toward him by our joined hands, slowly, giving me time to change my mind, as if there were any universe in which I was going to change my mind about this, and then his arms were around me and my face was against his chest and he was warm and solid and real, and I held on.

We stood there for a long time. Not kissing. Not talking. Just holding each other on a cold balcony in Virginia with an anonymous skyline glittering below us and the sound of each other's breathing filling the space where all the careful silence had been.

His chin rested on top of my head. My hands fisted in the back of his shirt. I could feel his heartbeat against my cheek, fast and uneven, the heartbeat of a man who'd just done something terrifying.

"This doesn't fix everything," I said into his chest.

"I know."

"The trust thing. That's going to take a while. I'm going to be... watching. Checking. Not because I don't believe you but because my brain is wired that way and I can't just rewire it because we had a moment on a balcony."

"I understand."

"And if you pull the walking-away thing again, the kissing me and then going cold, I need you to know that I can survive it. I've survived worse. But I don't want to. I shouldn't have to." My voice got thick on the last part and I pressed my face harder against his shirt like I could hide from it. "I'm asking you to not make me survive you."

His arms tightened. Not the constricting, desperate hold from the hallway. This was different. Careful. The hold of someone who'd been told they squeezed too hard and was trying to learn a different pressure.

"I'm not going to get this right," he said into my hair. "The... learning a different pressure thing. I'll overcorrect. Go too far the other way. Stand there paralyzed trying to figure out the right amount of..."

"I know."

"It's going to be frustrating."

"I eat lo mein from restaurants with C hygiene ratings for fun. My tolerance for frustration is higher than you think."

The sound he made was almost a laugh. I felt it vibrate through his chest and into mine, and something in me unclenched for the first time in four days.

We went inside eventually. It was freezing, and my ribs were aching, and standing on a balcony forever wasn't a sustainable life plan no matter how good it felt. He held the door open and I walked through, and the apartment looked different. Exactly the same, objectively. The grey furniture, the meaningless art, the two laptops at opposite ends of a table designed for avoidance. But the air had changed. The ceasefire had become something else.

He paused in the living room. Looked at me with an expression that was working hard to be casual and failing spectacularly.

"Are you hungry?"

"Starving. I've been stress-not-eating for four days."

"I noticed." Then, before I could respond to that: "The kitchen here is terrible but I can probably make eggs."

"You can make eggs in any kitchen. It's your superpower."

"Everyone should have one."

He went to the kitchen and I sat on the counter and watched him cook eggs at midnight, which was ridiculous and domestic and nothing like the adrenaline-soaked drama of storage units and car crashes and men with guns. He scrambled them because the safe house didn't have a proper pan for omelets, and he was visibly bothered by this, and I ate them straight from the skillet with a fork because we couldn't find clean plates.

"These are adequate," I said, stealing his word.

"They're subpar. The pan is warped."

"They're perfect."

He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug, and his eyes were tired and blue and unguarded in a way that made my chest hurt, and for a moment we were just two people eating scrambled eggs in a kitchen at midnight, and it was the best I'd felt in weeks.

"Lindsey," he said.

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry. For the hallway. For the four days. For..." He set the mug down. "For being so afraid of losing you that I lost you on purpose. I know that doesn't make any kind of sense."