Page 75 of Break My Heart

I should deflect the answer, but I can’t because I see him putting in the effort to make things right between us. “No.”

He pulls off his gloves slowly, like he’s giving the moment space instead of trying to control it.

“You decided.” His tone is cautiously optimistic.

“Yes.”

His helmet clears his head. Then he murmurs, “You’re committing to this—to working on us.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m tired of pretending there was a version of us that didn’t matter.”

His mouth curves in that glorious smile I know I’ve forever locked into my memory banks.

We fall into a rhythm over the next few days that’s reminiscent of our previous time together. He brings me coffee. I offer more smiles and am less abrasive. But it’s the elimination of space between us that changes things.

“You said you hate mornings,” I say the next day, glancing up from the data.

He’s leaning against the workbench, watching me instead of the screen. A smirk curves his lips. “Why do I feel like I’m about to regret sharing that with you?”

“It explains your lap times before noon.” I tap the top of the tablet.

He laughs. “You’ve been tracking that?”

“I track everything.”

The silence that follows isn’t awkward. It’s warm, filled with possibilities.

“You now see how mornings impact me. How does doing this”—he gestures around—“impact you?”

I hesitate before sharing a long-held memory. “When I was a teenager, my mom would always sit with me when I worked. Not because she understood advanced mathematics or coding, but because she wanted to be close to me.”

He doesn’t interrupt, so I go on. “She believed in supporting me, unequivocally. There was this one time when I was doing a homework assignment at the dinner table when Dad was away.”

“Okay, imagine your recipe cards,” I say, sliding closer to her with my laptop between us. “Each one has instructions, right? Step by step.”

“You mean the ones you reorganized by color and category when you were ten?”

“They were inefficient,” I reply automatically. Then, softer, “But yeah. Those.”

“Go on, genius,” she teases me affectionately.

“So, I’m writing instructions but for a computer.” I angle the screen toward her. “The difference is it only does exactly what I tell it. It can’t decide we need more salt.”

“You don’t need more salt,” my mother says automatically.

I giggle when I explain. “Exactly. It can only go off what I write.”

She hums. “That sounds like it could go wrong very quickly.”

“It does if you’re not precise.” I tap my keyboard. “This line here? It’s a loop. Think of it like stirring soup. You keep stirring until it’s ready.”

“How does the computer know when it’s ready?”

“It doesn’t.” I glance up at her. “I have to define that. Like…‘stop when the temperature hits this’ or ‘when it reaches this consistency.’ Otherwise, it just keeps going.”