“So maybe,” I say, “stop treating me like I’m some innocent bystander you accidentally dragged into the Matrix.”
“You’re not innocent,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Rude.”
“I mean you’re not helpless,” he corrects. “I know that. Intellectually. Emotionally, my system is still… catching up.”
I lie there, absorbing that.
My anxiety does drop a couple of points.
We’re companions in this, not a rescuer and a damsel.
“Hey, Knight?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For telling me that stuff earlier. About your family. About your… patches.”
He shifts, the mattress dipping closer.
“You regretting your patch notes yet?” he asks.
I wince. “You mean the part where I accidentally told you I love you?”
He goes very still.
Yeah.
There it is.
“My filter glitched,” I say quickly. “I wasn’t trying to?—”
“Don’t take it back,” he says, and there’s something raw in his voice that stops me mid-ramble. “Please don’t… walk that back.”
I stare at the shadow of his profile.
It’s dark, but I can see the line of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the way he’s turned a little toward me even though he’s keeping that careful inch of space.
“I’m not taking it back,” I say, heart pounding. “I just… feel weird about it being… out. In the air. Like some cartoon speech bubble I can’t pop.”
He lets out a breath that sounds almost like a relieved laugh. “Welcome to my life,” he murmurs. “You think I haven’t been choking on my own unsaid shit for years?”
“Language,” I whisper automatically.
He chuckles, the sound low and warm in the dark. “Lark,” he says after a moment, voice quieter, “can I say something that’s going to make your system panic and then maybe calm down?”
“Oh good,” I say. “More feelings. Hit me.”
He takes a breath. “When you said you loved me,” he says, each word deliberate, “I didn’t hear ‘girl with a crush on an idea.’ Iheard ‘person who has seen me at my worst and still chose me anyway.’ And I… don’t know what to do with that. I’m not good at it. I’m going to fumble it.”
I swallow.
“But,” he continues, “I also felt… lucky. Like somehow, despite my best efforts to keep everyone at arm’s length, you slipped through anyway. And now that you’re here… I don’t want you to go.”
The tight band around my lungs loosens. “Knight,” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
