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“Yes.”
“We should probably move.”
“Probably.” Neither of them did.
She was not ready for parameters.
“Thursday.”
“We already did Thursday.”
“The meadow.” His gaze drifted to the water. “We didn’t get to the meadow.”
The meadow invitation had predated the cliff fight and the beach. It belonged to an earlier version of whatever this was. “Different meadow energy now.”
“Different how.”
“More data points.” He turned to face her. She met it and didn’t turn away this time.
“Thursday.” His breath went out slowly, quiet enough that she almost missed it. She stood, brushed sand off her jeans, and walked along the beach toward the cliff cut before she did anything she’d have to explain to Bexley. The tide came in behind her, warm October water, filling the space where they’d been sitting.
She was going to tell Bexley everything. Every single pen. Including the tide pools glowing in broad daylight, which neither of them had mentioned. Mentioning it meant explaining why the ocean was responding to them, and she wasn’t ready for that in a professional session.
The cardigan was a good call, Valene.
TWELVE
TOR
She texted at eight fifty-one.
Can I come over?
Not Can we schedule a follow-up? Not I have questions. Not I’ve been thinking about the data and —
Can I come over?
Tor texted back Yes before he’d finished reading the message. She showed up forty minutes later in that blue cardigan, chin up, moving as if she had decided and was already carrying it out. He heard her on the gravel drive before she reached the steps. He opened the door. Her eyes went to him, then to the open doorway. “Normal people have doorbells.”
“I don’t need one.”
“What you need and what would make you seem less like someone who hears through walls are different things.” She stepped past him into the cabin, trailing warmth, a blue cardigan, and her cedar-and-salt scent, and he closed the door behind her. She went straight to the ship-in-bottle worktable. He’d known she would. She’d been curious about it since the forest, stealing the careful sidelong glances she saved for whatever interested her most. The current build sat in the center, rigging half-done, hull visible through the glass. “You’re actually mid-process.”
“The August build. It stalled.”
“Why stalled?”
“Distractions.”
Mirelle glanced back at him over her shoulder, as if she’d received information she’d enjoy having. He gave her nothing: not a raised eyebrow, not a word. Letting her figure it out unassisted had, over the past five weeks, become one of his more consistent pleasures. She set her notebook on the coffee table without opening it. Smoothed her cardigan. “Okay.” She turned from the worktable. “I’m going to say it. I’m here because I want to be here. Not for training, not for the case, not for anything professional. Is that —”
“Yes.”
“I hadn’t finished.”
“You’d finished.” Her eyes found him. “Are you always going to do that?”
“Do what.”
