Her breath catches. “Do I?”
I shut my eyes for half a second, because I know the truth, and saying it out loud feels like stepping off a cliff.
I open my eyes. “Yeah. You do.”
She sets her glass down with careful precision. “Cyrus…”
The power flickers again. The lights hold, but barely.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Just the storm.”
She looks at me like she wants to believe that. Like she wants to trust me with more than decorations and dinner prep.
Before I can ruin this, she says, “Why did you leave that morning? After the wedding.”
There it is.
The question I’ve been dodging since the second she walked into the store today.
I take a breath. “Because I was an idiot.”
She blinks. “That’s surprisingly straightforward.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me there when you woke up. And I didn’t trust myself not to want more.”
Her throat works. She sets her glass down next to mine. “You didn’t think I’d want you there?”
“You left town the next day. Didn’t return my message.”
“I never got a message,” she whispers.
My stomach drops. “I… what?”
She pulls her phone from her pocket, scrolls, then shakes her head. “Nothing from you. Nothing.”
Her phone must have glitched. Or I saved the number wrong. Or some other excuse that doesn’t actually matter.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” I say.
“I thoughtyouwere avoidingme,” she says.
We stare at each other, both breathing hard, both furious and relieved at the same time.
Then she steps closer.
Just an inch.
But it’s enough.
“Cyrus.” Her voice is quiet, steady. “What do we do now?”
The storm rumbles outside like it’s trying to answer for me.
I lift a hand and touch her cheek. Lightly. Carefully. Her skin is warm under my palm. She leans into it without hesitation.
“I think,” I say, “that we stop avoiding it.”
“What’s ‘it’?”
