"You don't even know me."
"I know enough."
"What do you know?"
He turns on his stool, facing me fully. This close, I can see the gray of his eyes shifting, like storm clouds. I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
"I know you ran when you could have stayed," he says. "That takes guts. I know you smile even when you're scared, and you hum when you don't think anyone's listening. I know you organized our storage room in three days when it hasn't been touched in four years." He pauses, and something in his expression shifts. "I know you look out your window at two AM when you can't sleep, and you look for me."
My breath catches. He knows. Of course he knows.
"I know," he says, softer now, the gravel in his voice smoothing to something almost gentle, "that someone convinced you you're not worth protecting. And I know they were wrong."
I'm crying. I didn't mean to cry. The tears just spill over, hot and sudden, streaking down my cheeks faster than I can wipe them away.
He doesn't touch me. Doesn't move. Just watches, steady and patient, like he's willing to wait out this storm the same way he's willing to wait out anything else.
"What do you want from me?" I whisper.
"Nothing you don't want to give."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got." He drains his whiskey and stands, dropping a few bills on the bar even though he owns the place. "Get some sleep, Sparrow. I'll be outside if you need me."
He walks toward the door, and I let him go. I should let him go—should let this moment end here, uncomplicated. Whatever this is between us, it's tangled and dangerous and complicated in ways I can't even begin to untangle, and I'm not ready for it. I'm not ready for any of it.
But I'm so tired of being not ready. I'm so tired of running from things that might actually matter.
"Jett."
He stops mid-stride, one hand frozen on the door handle, his broad shoulders tensing beneath his jacket.
"Thank you." The words feel painfully inadequate, too small for everything I'm trying to say, but I don't have better ones. I don't have the right language for this. "For everything. For... all of it."
He doesn't turn around. But I see his shoulders shift, just slightly—see him draw in a breath and hold it, like he's steadying himself. A breath he's been holding without even realizing it.
"You don't have to thank me."
"I want to."
Another pause, longer this time, heavy with things neither of us knows how to say. Then, so quiet I almost miss it beneath the faint music still playing downstairs: "Good night, Sparrow."
He's gone, the door swinging shut behind him with a soft click that somehow feels louder than it should.
I finish my drink in one burning swallow and head upstairs to my apartment, my heart pounding hard against my ribs for reasons that have nothing to do with fear this time.
At the window, I press my palm flat to the cold glass, my breath fogging the pane. He's there, of course. He's always there, like some kind of constant I didn't ask for but have come to expect. Leaning against the same weathered post he claims every night, cigarette glowing orange in the thick darkness.
He looks up slowly, as if sensing my gaze. Finds my window unerringly in the dark. And this time, when I lift my hand and wave—tentative, testing—he smiles.
Just a small thing, barely a curve of his lips, soft and genuine and gone so fast I might have imagined it if I weren't watching so carefully.
But I didn't imagine it. I saw it—saw the way it changed his whole face for just that fraction of a second. And I fall asleep with that smile burned into my mind like an afterimage, wondering what it might feel like to be the one who puts it there again, wondering if I'm brave enough to try.
4
JETT
