"Good. Because the man you gave a second chance, after behaviour for which he should frankly be in a cell, comes back here looking for what exactly? A third attempt?"
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying this is my fault?"
"I did not say that."
"It sounded close to that."
"It was not." He looked at his hand. She kept the ice pack in place. "I am saying what did you ever see in him?"
"He seemed decent," Elizabeth said. "He was charming and he listened and he said the right things. He seemed like someone who paid attention." She paused. "He was not terrible at the beginning. That is what makes it harder to understand."
"It is not yours to understand," Darcy said. "What he is has nothing to do with what you saw in him."
She looked at him.
"You were not wrong to give him a chance," he said. "You were wrong to assume that what he showed you was all of what he was. But that is not a flaw. That is just being human."
Elizabeth held his gaze for a moment. Then she looked down at his hand.
"You were terrible," she said quietly. The words arriving before she had decided to send them.
He looked at her. "When?"
"Eight years ago." She kept her eyes on the ice pack. "You were so controlled. So composed. I never knew what you were thinking and I was always trying to read you and getting it wrong and feeling like I was the problem. Like I was too loud, too much, taking up more space than I was supposed to."
"You were never too much," he said. His voice very quiet. "You were exactly the right amount. I just did not know how to show you that. I did not know how to show anyone that."
Elizabeth looked up at him.
The kitchen was very still.
She was close enough to see the small things — the set of his jaw, the steadiness of his eyes on hers, the particular quality of attention he gave her that she had been trying for weeks not to name.
She became aware that she had not moved her hand from his.
Neither of them moved.
The gap between them was small.
It had been getting smaller by degrees without either of them deciding it should. Now it was very small. The kitchen was very quiet. His hand was warm under hers and she was close enough to see the exact moment his eyes dropped to her mouth and came back up, slow and deliberate, and something in her chest pulled tight.
She did not move away.
He leaned in. She felt his breath before she felt anything else — warm, close, the particular stillness of someone who had decided something and was giving her every opportunity to disagree.
She did not disagree.
Their lips were a breath apart. Close enough that the gap was more suggestion than distance. Close enough that closing it would have required almost nothing from either of them. Close enough that she could feel the warmth of him and the quiet of the kitchen and the full weight of eight years sitting in that small space between them.
Then he stopped.
He did not move away entirely. He just stopped, that breath of distance still between them, and she felt rather than saw the decision move across him — something pulling back inside before his body followed. His forehead came to rest against hers briefly, the lightest possible contact, and she felt him exhale.
Then he sat back.
She stayed very still. She was not sure she was breathing.
She lifted the ice pack when she recovered. "Keep that on for another few minutes," she said. Her voice came out almost level.
