“I hope you know you’re one of the good ones, Dr. A.”
I pulled together the pieces of a smile. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
I remembered with such searing clarity the morning I crept out of Henry’s hotel room, thinking the exact same thing about him.
I walked homeafter dinner with Jenelle, bustling through Boston Common and around the State House in the cold. I would’ve ordered a car, but I got it in my head that I needed to walk and think, and now I had to deal with the consequences.
As I started down Temple Street, my heels hammering against the ancient brick sidewalk and my nose running from the freezing temps, I ripped off one glove and sent a text.
Whitney
Is it too late to talk?
Further down the street, I saw someone step out of a doorway, a phone illuminated in their hand. My pocket vibrated.
Henry
Never.
When I looked up from the screen, he was right in front of me. As if I’d summoned him.
“Hi,” he said. “There’s something I need to show you.”
“Oh. Okay.” That didn’t sound ominous at all.
I fumbled in my bag for the keys. When I started muttering about it being too damn dark to find anything, Henry reached right in and snagged them for me on the first go.
“Thanks.” I pointed to my door because I’d recently decided to be awkward. “I don’t think Brie will be there.”
He shook his head. “She and Mason are at my place. He’s heading home tomorrow.”
“Yeah. She mentioned that.” I stepped onto the stoop. He followed. It wasn’t a large space and he wasright there, the frosty white of his breath mingling with mine. I did my best to get the key in the lock and somehow failed repeatedly. “Just a second.”
Henry came up behind me, the broad expanse of his chest at my back, and covered my hand with his. I felt his words move over my skin when he said, “Let me.”
Without any difficulty, he unlocked the door and held it open for me. He kept a polite distance while we climbed the stairs, never once brushing my hand on the banister or crowding into my space on the landings. I hated polite Henry. I wanted him toyell or tease or slap my ass. Anything but this stiff, withdrawn formality.
Once we were inside, coats shucked and heels discarded, I charged into the kitchen, intent on getting us glasses of water though mostly needing a project so I didn’t melt down. “It’s very dry right now,” I said over my shoulder. “Do you have a humidifier?”
He set a laptop on the island. I hadn’t even noticed he was carrying his messenger bag. “I don’t.”
“You should look into it.” I stared into the refrigerator. It was packed with cupcakes. Boxes upon boxes. “I love you, but you have to cool it on the cupcakes. We have enough. More than enough. Which probably sounds crazy coming from me but—oh.Oh.”
What the hell did I just do?
Henry took a step toward me, his hand closed around the back of a chair and his scruffy jaw flexed. “That’s going to make what happens next a whole hell of a lot easier because I love you too. I’ve loved you longer than you’ll ever believe.”
I expected him to rush over and sweep me off my feet, clutching me to him as he spun us around the kitchen and said it over and over.
But he didn’t move and neither did I. We stared at each other, frozen, because there was something he needed to show me before we could fix this.
I closed the refrigerator. Not knowing what to say, I asked, “Is there anything else I can get you?”
He clicked a few times, pulling something up on the screen. “No. All I need is for you to hear me out.”
He was never solemn like this. Even at work, there was always a lightness to him, a buoyancy that I hadn’t noticed until it was gone. He didn’t say anything else until I sat down in front of the laptop.
“Last week, I was—” He leaned a hip against the island, crossed his arms. It seemed like I could hear his jaw at work. “I love that you’re serious and that you’re smarter than everyone so you come up with forty different outcomes for every problem before the rest of us have figured out what the problem is. What I said last week—I was wrong. Everything went wrong that night and I said things that weren’t fair.”
