Sloane returned with two mugs of tea, offering one with a slight tilt of her head.
“Chamomile,” she said. “Because you’re old and fragile now.”
Catherine snorted softly, taking the mug. “Charming.”
“I try.”
Sloane sat beside her, not too close, not crowding, but close enough that their knees brushed, and Catherine didn’t move away. They sipped in silence for a few moments, the air between them buzzing with something cautious but warm.
It was Sloane who finally broke it.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” she asked, her voice gentle, threading through the quiet. “For us, I mean. Again.”
Catherine let her head rest against the back of the sofa, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I don’t know what ready is supposed to feel like. But I know I want this. I want you.”
Sloane didn’t reply right away. Catherine turned her head slightly and found Sloane watching her—not with suspicion or disbelief, but with that quiet intensity she always had when she was studying a painting up close and looking for meaning between the lines.
“I’m ready to learn how to be with you,” Catherine continued. “Openly. No hiding. I just...I might be slow.”
Sloane reached over, her fingers curling softly around Catherine’s free hand.
“Then we’ll take our time,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
That did something to Catherine—made her shoulders drop, her breath release, made her thumb slide along Sloane’s knuckle like a promise. “That night before the accident,” she said quietly, “I thought I’d ruined everything. I told myself you’d walked away because you realized I wasn’t built for love.”
“You’re not built for pretending not to need it,” Sloane replied. “That’s all.”
They sat like that for a long time, just holding hands, the tea forgotten.
“I’ve been so afraid,” Catherine admitted eventually. “Of needing anyone. Of being seen. That if someone got close enough, they’d see everything I work so hard to keep buried and run.”
Sloane leaned in, her shoulder brushing Catherine’s. “I’ve already seen it. And I’m still here.”
Catherine looked down at their joined hands. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Even when I pushed you away?”
“I came back, didn’t I?”
A beat of silence. Catherine blinked against the warmth that rushed to her throat.
“What do you want from this?” she asked, more fragile than she meant to sound.
Sloane didn’t flinch. “I want what we had, but healthier. Real. I want dinners like this. Arguments we work through. Silence that isn’t distance. I want to wake up next to you and not wonder if you’ll be gone by morning.”
“I want that too,” Catherine said, almost too quietly to hear. “But I don’t know how to be good at it.”
“You don’t have to be good at it,” Sloane said. “You just have to keep trying.”
Catherine turned then, really turned, and looked at her. “I’m trying,” she said.
Sloane gave her a smile that was all warmth and gravity. “Then we’re already better than we were before.”
They stayed there on the couch, fingers entwined, tea gone cold beside them. The city glowed beyond the glass, a soft pulse of light and life outside the haven they were slowly building.
Trust, Catherine realized, wasn’t built in grand declarations or passionate nights. It was built here—in quiet, careful evenings where someone stayed, and someone chose to let them.
The condo was quiet, their tea mugs still sitting abandoned on the coffee table, shadows of steam long faded. Outside, the city exhaled softly, lights blinking across distant high-rises, but inside, time had slowed into something sacred.
Sloane stood first, her hand outstretched. “Come with me?”
