“Yeah, just you and me.”
She nodded once, like that answered something inside her. “Good.”
I set my keys down on the bar slower than necessary. Gave myself a moment to breathe. To remember she’d been through hell and that wanting her didn’t give me the right to take anything from her she didn’t offer.
She watched me do it. I could see the flicker of awareness cross her face. The way her shoulders dropped a fraction, like she noticed I wasn’t going to rush her.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
A ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Guess we were both wrong.”
I moved behind the bar on instinct, poured her water without asking, and set it in front of her. She didn’t reach for it. Her eyes stayed on me instead, following the movement of my hands like she was grounding herself in something solid.
“How are you?”
She huffed a quiet laugh. “That’s a loaded question.”
“I know.”
She leaned against the bar, glass forgotten. “I’m here.”
It wasn’t much. It was everything.
I nodded. “That’s enough.”
Her gaze sharpened at that, something flickering low and hot beneath the exhaustion I knew too well. She pushed away from the bar and moved before stopping close enough that I could feel her heat, the faint tremor running through her like her body hadn’t quite decided it was done reacting yet.
“You keep saying things like that,” she said softly. “Like you don’t need anything from me.”
I swallowed. “I don’t.”
“That’s a lie.”
I met her eyes. Didn’t flinch. “It’s not.”
She studied my face like she was searching for a crack, atell, something she could call out and use as an excuse to pull back. When she didn’t find it, her breath shuddered out of her.
“I didn’t come to thank you.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t come to talk about what happened.”
“I know.”
“I came because everything still feels wrong,” she said, the words finally roughening. “Because I wake up and it’s like my body doesn’t belong to me yet. Because I don’t know how to be normal again, and I needed something to remind me that I’m still here.”
I didn’t move. Didn’t touch her. Didn’t give her anything she hadn’t asked for.
She stepped closer anyway.
Her fingers brushed the edge of my shirt, tentative at first, like she was checking whether the ground would hold. When I didn’t stop her, didn’t lean in or take over, her hand flattened against my chest, warm and steady, and something in her expression shifted.
She kissed me like she’d already made peace with the consequences.
It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t desperate. It was slow and deliberate and full of intent, like she was choosing the moment instead of being carried by it. Her mouth was warm, soft, insistent in a way that sent a jolt straight through me, down to a place I hadn’t let myself acknowledge since the night I’d found her.
