“Don’t tempt me,” he deadpans. “I’m dangerous with a crochet hook.”
I grin so hard my face hurts.
He makes pancakes—real ones, thick and golden, the kind that soak up butter like it’s a calling. He flips them with an ease that makes me suspect he’s done this for other people before and then feel a tiny, ridiculous flare of jealousy. He watches me take the first bite like he’s waiting for a verdict.
I close my eyes and make an inappropriate noise.
“Okay,” he says, satisfied. “Good.”
We spend the morning with small things that feel big. We puzzle through a battered thousand-piecer he found tucked in a closet (“I’m not saying this missing edge piece is a metaphor for my life, but—”), and when my fingers start to go cold he shoves wool socks on my feet like he’s annoyed I have toes at all. We walk the tree line—me in his spare beanie, him pointing out animal prints in the snow like I’m the student in a tracking class I never signed up for.
“Deer,” he says, toeing the two-toed print. “Coyote. Rabbit.”
“Please don’t say bear.”
“You’re safe.”
I look up at him then—really look. Wind-pinked cheeks, lashes feathered with tiny flakes, a mouth that refuses to smile unless I wrestle one out of it. Traces of last night live at the corner of his eyes, in the loosening of his shoulders, in the way he keeps brushing his knuckles against mine like he can’t help it.
“You keep saying that,” I say softly. “That I’m safe.”
“I’ll keep proving it.”
We make lunch and don’t burn anything. We talk about nothing and everything. He tells me about summers spent in a double-wide with a mother who worked two jobs and taught him how to make beans taste like dinner. I tell him about my grandma’s duck slippers and how I learned to hide cash in the hems of my jeans, just in case. We don’t sayTravismuch. We don’t have to. He’s a shadow, and today the light is good.
In the late afternoon, a lazy snow starts to fall. I stretch on the couch and watch it through the window, the flakes soft and slow, the kind that make even silence feel like it’s humming. Nate sits in the chair across from me, feet bare, an open book face-down on his thigh.
“What?” I ask, smiling.
He shakes his head, almost sheepish. “Wasn’t sure I’d ever get this.”
“What?”
“Quiet,” he says. Then, after a beat, “You.”
My heart does that messy, high-kick thing. I flop onto my stomach and prop my chin on my hands. “Tell me something true.”
He tips his head. “About what?”
“You.”
There’s a pause.
“I don’t think I deserve nice things,” he says. Matter-of-fact. No self-pity. Just truth. “Not after what I’ve done. Not after who I’ve been.”
The words hit me like a hand to the sternum. Not because they surprise me—because they explain him. The careful control. The distance he builds and dismantles a brick at a time, like he’s not sure the foundation can hold.
I push up, cross the space, and climb into his lap without asking. He catches me by the waist, and then settles his hands there like that’s where they live.
“Listen to me,” I say, palms framing his jaw. “You apologized last night for protecting me. Today you apologized for making me breakfast. You just apologized for being in love with the quiet. You don’t need forgiveness for existing.” I lean in until our foreheads touch. “And if you think you don’t deserve nice things, then I’m going to be the nicest thing and you’re going to have to deal with it.”
A breath of a laugh shakes out of him. “Bossy.”
“Management,” I remind him.
Something flickers in his eyes—want, affection, relief. He curls a hand around the back of my neck and kisses me like the day’s been heading toward this exact second the whole time.
It starts soft. It doesn’t stay there.
