Page 283 of Safe With You

He’d been giving me proof, little by little, one ordinary thing at a time.

“I am,” I said.

“I know.”

I looked at him.

His mouth lifted at one corner.

“You know?”

“I’m learning.”

I laughed before I could help it.

“You’re irritating.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep being irritating.”

“And yet you keep coming around.”

“That might be temporary.”

“See, now you’re lying.”

I smiled.

And just like that, the room felt lighter.

What I told him hadn’t disappeared. Lucas still existed. Those five years still happened, and I was still carrying pieces of them I was only beginning to recognize.

But Ellis didn’t look at me differently now that he knew. He didn’t look sorry for me or ask why I stayed or tell me what I should’ve done.

He was just sitting beside me with his hand wrapped around mine like nothing about telling him the truth changed whether I belonged there.

Maybe that was the part I wasn’t prepared for.

I’d spent so long believing that being fully known came with consequences that I’d never considered the possibility that sometimes you could tell somebody the thing you were afraid would change the room, and the room stayed exactly the same.

For a little while, neither of us said anything. Ellis’s thumb kept moving over the back of my hand, slow and absentminded, while whatever preview was playing on the television ended and another one started.

Eventually, he looked toward the screen. “So are we ever going to pick something?”

I blinked. “What?”

“We’ve been on the same menu for twenty minutes.”

I glanced at the television. He was right.

“You were talking.”

“So were you.”

“That feels different.”

His eyebrows lifted. “How?”