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“Kell.”

“I don’t mean I owe you.” Good, because I’m not sure I could survive that conversation right now.

“I know.” His thumb moves over the inside of my wrist.

“I like when you let me do things for you.”

My fingers curl slowly into the blanket. Earlier, I stood in the kitchen thinking about everything I still control because Kell is new to this life. Money. Transportation. Reading. A hundred practical things he has to trust me to help him navigate.

I couldn’t bear the idea of adding his body to that list. Tonight I gave him mine instead.

Not because he took it. Because I asked him to.

And afterward, when I could have reached for the washcloth or the water or told him my wrists were perfectly fine, I let him keep doing things for me.

So I turn my face slightly toward the pillow. Kell can’t see me from here. Maybe that’s why he keeps talking.

“When you’re at work, I think of things I want to tell you.”

I forget to breathe for a beat. I wait until my breathing starts again before I trust myself to answer.

“Things that happen?”

“Yes. Or things I find. Music. Paint. Something Locke says. Sometimes I think about what you’ll say before I tell you.” His mouth touches my hair again.

“Sometimes I know what will make you laugh.”

My hand tightens in the blanket. I could make this easier with a joke. “That sounds dangerously confident.”

“It usually works.”

There’s the Kell I can manage. Then his arm tightens around me.

“I like hearing you come home.”

I don’t make a joke. His hand is warm and still over my stomach now, and I become painfully aware of every place his body touches mine.

“I hear your key. Then the door. Sometimes you put your bag down before you take your shoes off. Sometimes you don’t.” I swallow once before trusting my voice.

“You’ve been keeping statistics?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“I just notice.” My fingers loosen from the blanket only because I force them to.

“I like going places without you too.” The sentence surprises a laugh out of me.

“Thank you?”

“That came out wrong.”

“A little.”

He shifts impossibly closer behind me. “I mean I like that I can go somewhere because I want to. Locke’s. The park. Somewhere with the phone. I don’t have to wait for you.”

“I know.”