“You okay?” Sloane asked, voice low.
Catherine nodded, her throat too tight for speech.
Sloane didn’t press. She just gestured toward the couch. “Sit. I’ll make something. You’ve probably had nothing but jello and IV fluids for days.”
Catherine raised an eyebrow. “You’re cooking?”
Sloane grinned, already unpacking ingredients. “I’m competent, not good. Don’t get excited.”
She moved with natural confidence through the kitchen, sleeves pushed up and hair twisted into a messy knot. She wore Catherine’s oversized gray sweatshirt, the one she’d once borrowed and apparently never returned. Seeing her in it now made something shift in Catherine’s chest. It was ordinary. Domestic. Intimate.
She sat, knees pulled to her chest, and watched.
Sloane talked while she chopped vegetables about a painting she was working on, a dog she saw in the street wearing a raincoat, and a ridiculous conversation she overheard in a coffee shop.
And Catherine just listened.
It felt like breathing after being underwater.
At one point, Sloane looked over her shoulder, eyes dancing. “You know, this silence used to mean you were judging me.”
Catherine tilted her head. “And now?”
“Now I think you just like the sound of me.”
Catherine smirked. “Maybe.”
They ate on the couch, plates balanced on their knees, the TV on in the background but muted. Sloane’s cooking was exactly what she said: competent. The pasta was slightly overdone andthe sauce leaned a little too heavy on lemon, but Catherine didn’t care.
She hadn’t tasted anything this good in weeks.
Halfway through the meal, Sloane looked over at her, fork hovering midair. “You’re really quiet.”
“I’m just...tired.”
Sloane nodded. “Of your mother? Or of holding the world up by your own spine?”
Catherine blinked at her. The question was a knife and a balm all at once.
“Yes,” she said softly.
They didn’t talk much after that. But it wasn’t avoidance. It was ease. They cleaned up together—Catherine drying the dishes, Sloane stacking them haphazardly into the cupboards.
After, Catherine lingered in the hallway outside her bedroom, watching as Sloane settled on the couch.
“You can stay, you know,” Catherine said.
Sloane looked up slowly. “You sure?”
Catherine nodded. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
There was no heat in her voice, no edge of seduction. Just honesty.
Sloane rose, walked to her, and gently brushed a curl behind her ear. “Okay.”
After the dishes were done and the light from the kitchen dimmed into a soft golden haze, Catherine found herself back on the couch, tucked beneath the throw Sloane had draped over her the last time she’d been there. The weight of it was familiar, and it smelled of clean linen, faint lavender, and something distinctly Sloane.
She curled her legs beneath her, eyes half-lidded but alert. Her body ached in places still healing, but the ache wasn’t unbearable. Not like before. Not like the quiet that had stretched between them for too long.
