I let out a slow breath. “Yeah. That too.”
Her brow softened with something that wasn’t pity—thank God—but something like recognition. She wasn’t unfamiliar with running from emotional noise. Maybe that’s why she understood the quiet places in me without trying to fill them.
“So,” she said, fingertips drawing an invisible circle on the table, “your fiancée didn’t like… the serious version of you?”
“She said it felt like being with a man standing half in another world.”
“That’s poetic,” Sienna muttered. “Unnecessarily dramatic, but poetic.”
I laughed. “We weren’t a great match. Honestly, I think she fell in love with the idea of me before she met the real version.”
“Is that why you didn’t date after?” she asked softly. “Because you didn’t want to disappoint someone again?”
I blinked. “Maybe. Or maybe I just made myself too busy to notice.”
She considered that, then lifted her brows. “So what changed?”
“You changed it,” I said before I could think better of it.
Her breath caught, shoulders going very still. “Me?”
“You,” I repeated. “You show up at the gear shed with your bright scarves and your ten-mile-an-hour energy. You argue with a zebra. You fall into lakes. You say the wrong thing twenty times and somehow end up saying exactly the right thing. You make me laugh in ways I haven’t in years.”
A flush bloomed across her cheeks. “You laugh because I panic.”
“I laugh because you’re honest,” I corrected. “And because you don’t hide who you are.”
“That’s not true,” she said softly. “I hide all the time.”
“Then maybe you hide in bright colors,” I said, “but I still see you.”
She held my gaze, vulnerability flickering behind her eyes like a candle caught in a breath of wind.
Before either of us said something too raw, the server arrived with our dinner, perfectly timed, unintentionally rescuing us both from emotional combustion.
“Here we are,” she chirped. “One mac and cheese and one mushroom risotto.”
We murmured thanks, and as soon as the server left, Sienna stabbed a mushroom dramatically.
“Okay,” she said. “Enough heavy. We need banter.”
“Is that officially medically prescribed?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Side effects may include charm, flirtation, and a sense of impending doom.”
“That last one feels targeted.”
“It absolutely was.”
I took a bite of risotto and raised an eyebrow. “So what kind of banter were you looking for?”
“Something fun,” she said. “Something light. Something that distracts me from the fact that your emotional vulnerability makes me want to throw my fork into the lake.”
“That’s… troubling.”
“It’s romantic,” she corrected. “In a damaged-sparrow kind of way.”
I laughed. “Is that what I am? A damaged sparrow?”
