Page 314 of Safe With You

Not you don’t need to.

Not let me.

Just I know.

I let him carry it.

Outside, Mila walked a few steps ahead of us, already talking about what she was going to draw when she got home.

Ellis reached for my hand.

His fingers slid between mine like they’d done it a hundred times.

I didn’t look down this time.

I just held on.

For a second, I wondered what we looked like to everybody else.

Probably nothing remarkable. Two adults walking through a parking lot while a little girl skipped ahead of them, swinging a bag of glitter pens she absolutely did not need.

Just something ordinary.

The thought didn’t scare me.

By the time we got back to Ellis’s house, it was after five.

Mila disappeared into the living room with her glitter pens almost immediately.

“You undermined me,” Ellis said as the front door closed.

“She’s happy.”

“She was already happy.”

“Now she’s glitter-pen happy.”

“That is not a thing.”

“It is now.”

He shook his head and carried the bags into the kitchen.

I followed him and started putting things away.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

The words came out before I thought about them.

Ellis looked at me.

I paused with the toothpaste still in my hand.

Then I smiled.

“See?”