I'm a Mercer, and Mercers feel everything and show nothing, and I just showed this quiet man with the matching scar everything I've been hiding for years.
He doesn't say anything for a long moment, then he reaches over and takes my hand.
Not dramatically. Not with any kind of grand gesture.
He just reaches across the space between us and wraps his hand around mine—rough against smooth, warm against cold, his scarred knuckles pressing against my fingers. He holds on.
"I know," he says. "I do the same thing."
My heart is doing something it has no business doing.
My breath is doing something it has no business doing.
The entire county of Monongalia could be on fire right now and I wouldn't notice because Coin is holding my hand on his front porch and his thumb is moving across my knuckles the way I watched it move across Wrenleigh's in the ER, slow, steady, and deliberate.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Just for a second. Maybe two.
My whole body goes still.
He leans toward me. An inch. Maybe less.
The space between us shrinks to something I could close with a breath, and I can see every shade of blue and gray in his eyesand the line of his scar and the way his jaw tightens like he's fighting something?—
"You're Garrett's sister."
The words land like cold water.
He pulls back.
Not far—just enough.
Just enough to put the distance back, to rebuild the wall, to remind both of us that this isn't simple and it was never going to be.
"I'm my own woman," I say. And my voice is steadier than I expect it to be, steadier than I feel, because I mean it. I mean it more than I've meant anything in a long time.
He looks at me. Those eyes—searching, careful, wanting something he won't let himself take.
"I know you are," he says quietly. "That's the problem."
We sit there. His hand is still holding mine. Neither of us lets go.
We don't kiss. Not tonight. But something happened on this porch that can't unhappen, and we both know it, and the knowing sits between us like a third person—present, patient, waiting.
He squeezes my hand once, then lets go.
"You should get home," he says. "It's late."
"Yeah." I don't move. "It is."
I stand up eventually. Give him back the coffee mug. Don't give him back the flannel because he doesn't ask for it and I'm not offering, and we both pretend that's not significant.
"Good night, Coin."
"Good night, Leah."
I walk to my car.
Bloodhound is in the shadows at the end of the porch—I'd almost forgotten he was there, which tells me how far gone I am.
