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“I am aware of that also,” he says, entirely unrepentant.

“You keep being aware of things and doing them anyway,” I say.

“I find I have run rather short of ways to want you less,” he says, simple and plain, no drama in it at all, which somehow makes it worse, or better, I genuinely can’t tell which anymore. “I have tried distance. I have tried toast. I have tried reminding myself, repeatedly, of every reason this pause exists and every argument in favour of it. None of it has made the slightest difference to the fact of you.”

I don’t have an answer for that. I’m not sure there is one, not one that doesn’t involve crossing three feet of pavement and breaking every rule we made mere days ago. Rules that seemed sensible at the time and now feel increasingly like something dreamed up by people who had never actually tried missing each other this specifically before.

“We should still do it properly,” I say instead, quietly, mostly to remind myself as much as him. “The pause. Whatever this is between us right now, standing here not touching, doesn’t count as breaking it. It’s just. Being honest about how badly we’re both doing at keeping it.”

“Agreed,” he says. Something in his voice suggests he’d have agreed to almost anything I said in that moment, provided it let him keep standing here a little longer. “I will continue burning toast I do not eat happily. You will continue walking the long way home for reasons you will not properly admit to.”

“I admitted it to you just now,” I point out.

“You admitted it to the pavement, mostly,” he says. “I was simply standing near enough to overhear.”

I smile properly at that, the first real one in days that doesn’t feel like it’s being held up by force. He watches it happen with the particular focused attention he gives everything that matters, like he’s cataloguing it somewhere to take out later, maybe on one of the toast evenings, and look at again.

He walks me the rest of the way home. Not quite the way he used to, but close enough. A careful few feet back, the same distance he kept that night with the mugger. Before any of this started, before either of us knew what we’d be trying and failing to give up, days into an agreement neither of us are built for.

At my door, he stops where the streetlight doesn’t quite reach, and I stop too. For a moment neither of us moves. The whole evening balanced on the width of a doorstep that I can’t let him pass.

“Goodnight,” I say, and it costs more than it should. Two syllables carrying the full weight of everything neither of us is saying.

“Goodnight, Bunny,” he says, and doesn’t move to follow me in, though everything about him looks like it costs him to stay put.

I let myself in, and then check the window before I get into bed, the way I always do. There he is. Further back than usual, tucked against a wall rather than the bush. Keeping the distance he’s promised to keep even now, amber eyes tilted up towards me in the dark.

I give him a little wave. Then I award myself, generously and with no evidence whatsoever, full marks for handling the entire evening with tremendous maturity.

He doesn’t wave back, I’m not sure if he knows how. But something in the set of his shoulders eases slightly. And I’ll take that tonight, as more than enough.

Chapter 16

Bare Necessities

Ileave the library at eleven. Technically, it’s open twenty-four hours, but the cleaners looked very unhappy to see me, and that’s fair enough. I know I wouldn’t want to try to clean up around a customer.

And now Bristol’s decided, apparently, that the correct response to this is to open the heavens directly over my head the second I step outside.

I don’t have an umbrella. Of course I don’t have an umbrella. I pull my hood up, which does almost nothing, and start the walk home, telling myself firmly that rain is character building. That puddles have a certain charm, if you look at them properly.

The streets are empty at this time of night, streetlamps smeared gold through the downpour. My own footsteps are the only sound for blocks at a time. I used to like walking home this late. I still do, mostly. It’s just that I used to do it with someone three paces behind me. The three paces of nothing behind me now feels considerably louder than any footsteps ever have.

How ridiculous it is to miss the specific quality of silence a person brings with them.

I step off the kerb while composing in my head the sort of cheerful internal monologue I’ve been giving myself for two days straight. Every cloud. Silver lining. This too shall pass. All the things I actually believe, said often enough that tonight they’ve started sounding slightly hollow even to me.

Headlights. A horn, enormous and immediate. Someone screams, and it takes me a full second to realise that the someone is me.

Then I’m not in the road anymore.

I’m back on the pavement, pressed against something solid and cold and utterly unmoving. The bus roars past close enough that I feel the wind of it against my back, and it takes my brain a long moment to catch up with what my body already knows.

I look up. Amber eyes, wide and stark in the rain, staring down at me like he’s checking I’m actually still whole.

“You,” I manage, breathless, “are extremely fast.”

He doesn’t answer. He just holds me here, like we’re doing the dip in some ballroom dance while rain streams down my face, and his hand presses flat between my shoulder blades.