“Kitten.”
I lift my hands off the keyboard and press them to my eyes. “Sorry,” I say.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head, then drop my hands from my face. “My knee is killing me,” I say, more to myself than to him.
“Then you ought to sit down.”
“I’d rather be moving.”
Ollie doesn’t say anything more. He simply stands there, holding me as I navigate to the site I use to monitor my credit. I froze my credit years ago. I have every protection system in place imaginable, but you never know.
When I see nothing unexpected, I let out a quick breath of relief.
“Are you okay, love?” Ollie says.
“All my accounts look good.”
He drops his arms from around me and turns me to face him. I let him, suddenly exhausted. Ollie holds my face in his hands. “But areyouokay?”
“I’ll be fine.” I hate how my voice trembles, how the emotion isright behind my words. Unwanted tears threaten to slip through, but I fight them back. Ollie doesn’t say anything. He lets go of my face and pulls me to him, resting his chin on top of my head.
“I don’t think I can do dinner tonight,” I say. My voice is a thread away from breaking, but here, tucked against Ollie’s chest, I allow myself to shed a few silent tears.
“I already texted Alex and Jo and told them we had to reschedule,” he murmurs.
“Thank you.” My voice is barely above a whisper. I’m not sure he hears.
After a few minutes, Ollie kisses the top of my head and pulls away. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s see which of your murder shows is marathoning on Oxygen.” He reaches around me to shut my laptop, then guides me into the living room. He takes the remote from the coffee table and turns on the TV.
“Florida Man Murders...” he mutters, eyes on the screen. He slides his gaze to me. “Is that too close to home?”
I laugh from where I’ve buried myself in throw blankets.
The flicker of a smile appears at the corner of his mouth. “Florida Man Murdersit is, then. Just know I won’t be able to sleep tonight.” He tosses the remote beside me on the couch. “You hungry?”
“A little.”
“That’s a problem I can fix,” he says. “You good here?”
I nod.
“Be right back.”
When Ollie returns halfway through an episode ofFlorida Man Murders, he’s carrying the largest plate of his homemade pizza rolls I’ve ever seen, and I almost start crying all over again. He sets the plate on the coffee table, then pulls the blankets off my legs—just enough so that my feet are poking out—and sits on my feet before arranging the blankets over me again.
“Look at this,” Ollie says. He hands me his phone. “I forgot to show you the tile in the master bathroom. It made me think of you.”
I stare at the photo. The tileissomething I’d like, pink with a white palm frond pattern here and there. Elegant with a touch of whimsy. But I don’t love it. In this moment, I’ve never hated anything more.
“It’s nice,” I say, and hand him back the phone.
“And there’s this,” he says, flicking to another photo. He holds out the phone to me again, but I don’t take it. I glance at it but don’t take in a thing.
“Cool,” I say.
Ollie furrows his brow. “You don’t like it? We could always see a different place tomorrow.”
