But something loosened in my chest. Not absolution. Not quite permission.
There was just me, and the smallest crack in the wall I'd built around myself.
I'd spent three years believing the promise meant keeping my distance. Staying in the shadows. Watching over her without ever really being there.
But what if I'd had it wrong?
What if the promise wasn't about protecting her from a distance—but about making sure she wasn't alone?
CHAPTER 10
Cal
A week of small moments,and every single one of them was becoming unbearable.
It started with the cabinet. The one in Lucy's kitchen, the one I'd fixed before but had started squeaking again. She mentioned it in passing, didn't even ask me to look at it, but the next evening I was at her door with my toolbox anyway.
"You don't have to keep fixing things," she tried to argue with me, but at the same time, she stepped back to let me in.
"I know."
"I can call the landlord."
"You could." I set the toolbox on her counter, started pulling out what I needed. "But we both know he won't show up for another month."
She didn't want it again. Just leaned against the doorframe and watched me work, the way she'd started doing lately. I could feel her eyes on me,tracking my movements, and I had to focus harder than I should have on a simple hinge adjustment.
That was Thursday. Friday, she brought dinner to the station. Showed up during the quiet stretch between calls with containers of pasta and garlic bread, enough to feed the whole crew. Said she'd made too much and didn't want it to go to waste.
Liam caught my eye from across the kitchen. She was busy serving Owen seconds, and as our gazes met, Liam raised an eyebrow. I looked away, ignoring him.
Saturday, we watched a movie on her couch. Some comedy she'd been wanting to see, something light and stupid that didn't require thinking. We sat close enough that our shoulders touched. Neither of us moved away. I spent two hours hyperaware of every point of contact between us, the warmth of her arm against mine, the way she shifted and settled and shifted again.
Sunday, she helped me change the oil in my truck. Stood in the parking lot behind the building, handing me tools, asking questions about what I was doing and why. Her hands got dirty. She didn't seem to mind. When we were done, she had a smear of grease on her cheek, and I had to stop myself from reaching out to wipe it away.
Every interaction felt charged now. Weighted with something neither of us would name. The air between us had changed, thickened, becoming something I could almost taste. And I didn't know what to do about it except keep showing up, keep findingreasons to be near her, keep pretending this was still about protection.
It wasn't about protection anymore. It hadn't been for a while.
Intimacy crept in through the small things. The things that shouldn't have mattered, but defined everything.
During one of our moments, Lucy started borrowing my clothes. It began with a hoodie she grabbed one night when her apartment was cold, a worn gray thing I'd had for years. She'd pulled it on without asking, swimming in the fabric, the sleeves hanging past her hands.
"I'll give it back," she promised.
"Keep it."
She did. I saw her wearing it three more times that week. Each time, something in my chest did a thing I didn't want to examine too closely.
She knew how I took my coffee now. Not because I'd told her, but because she'd been paying attention. Black, one sugar, hot enough to burn. One day, she handed me a mug without asking, fixed exactly right, and I’d think about how long it had been since someone knew something that small about me.
Inside jokes developed between us. References to stories we'd told each other, shorthand that didn't make sense to anyone else. At the station, I'd catch myself almost saying something, almost making ajoke that only Lucy would understand, and I'd have to stop myself because Liam was already watching me too closely.
Owen came by one afternoon to help me fix the bathroom faucet in Lucy's apartment. The washer had gone bad, and I needed an extra set of hands. He showed up with his own tools, took one look around, and didn't say anything.
But I saw him noticing everything around the apartment. The book on her coffee table that I'd lent her. The mug in the sink that matched the ones in my apartment. The hoodie draped over the back of a chair, my hoodie, the gray one she'd claimed as her own.
He helped me fix the faucet. Made small talk with Lucy about her job, about the weather, nothing important. When we were done, she thanked us both, offered us coffee, smiled at Owen like he was just another face, like he wasn't one of my best friends cataloging every detail of this scene.
