He looks at me for a long moment. "You'd do that," he says. Not a question, exactly. More like he's testing the weight of it. "Structure your entire work around my weirdness?"
"Around our life," I correct. "Around how we work best."
He's quiet. I let him be quiet. I've learned that with Finn, silence isn't absence, it's where he keeps the things that matter most.
"I want you to stay," he says finally. His voice is low, precise. "I want to wake up and know you're there. I want to argue about methodology over bad coffee and listen to you talk through problems I'm not supposed to answer." A pause. "That's what I want. You asked, so I'm telling you."
Something in my chest comes completely undone.
"Then that's what we're doing," I say.
He pulls me against him in the kind of way that saysyou belong herewithout using any words at all. His arms settle around me. Safe. Secure.
"Finn," I say into his shoulder.
"Mm."
"I love you."
He goes still. I feel him processing it, turning it over, categorizing it, letting it land in whatever part of him has been holding the door open for all these lonely years.
Then he pulls back just enough to look at me. His face is serious and soft at the same time, that specific Finn combination that I didn't know existed before him.
"That's…hm," He stops. Starts again. "I love you too." He says it like a conclusion. Like a finding. "I've been trying to determine the correct moment to say it. I kept identifying better options and then not taking them."
I laugh, pressing my face against his chest. "You could have just said it."
"There's no such thing asjustsaying something important."
That night, the guesthouse room is small and the walls are thin and neither of us cares.
Finn closes the door and the settlement sounds muffle and we stand there in the near-dark, and he looks at me like he's still a little surprised I'm real.
"I spent hours," he says. "In a crowd."
"You did brilliantly."
"I had you." He crosses the room slowly. His hands come up to frame my face, thumbs tracing my cheekbones like he's memorizing measurements. "Having you there made it navigable."
"That's what I'm for."
"Not only that."
I kiss him before he can find the rest of the sentence. He makes a low sound and pulls me in, one hand sliding into my hair, the other settling at the small of my back. I've been thinking about this all day. About finally being alone with him after watching him hold himself together in a crowd for my sake.
I want to take him apart a little. Return the favor.
I walk him backward toward the narrow bed until his knees hit the frame and he sits, and I stay standing. His hands drop to my hips, steadying or holding, I'm not sure which.
"Kate?"
"I want to try something," I say. "Something I want to do. For you."
He looks up at me in the dim light.
I sink to my knees in front of him.
He goes absolutely still.
