"And my moderation system?"
"Caught the obvious ones. Missed the big picture."
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?"
"I'm processing. Give me a minute."
He gives me a minute. He gives me several minutes, actually, standing at his kitchen counter while I sit at the table and read every page of the folder and feel the shape of something I've been telling myself was manageable, get considerably larger and considerably less manageable.
When I'm done I close the folder.
"I'm scared," I say.
I have not said this sentence out loud to another person in approximately five years. The last time was to my brother, in thehospital parking lot, when my dad was having tests done and I was pretending to be fine and Cian looked at me and saidyou don't have to do that with meand I cried in his car for ten minutes and then went back inside and performed fine for the rest of the day.
"I know," Declan says.
He doesn't say anything. He puts his arms around me and I press my face into his chest and I stand there. Just that. Just standing in his kitchen being held by a man who has been watching me manage things alone for months and has been waiting, with the patience of someone who has waited for everything, for me to stop.
We stand there for a while. The fridge hums. The folder sits on the table behind me. His hand on the back of my head, the way my dad holds me when I hug him, except nothing else about this is like my dad and I am not going to think about that comparison right now.
"I'm sorry about the argument," I say. Into his chest.
He's quiet for a moment. "Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry. You were right."
"I know I was right. That's not what I'm sorry about." I pull back enough to look at him. "I'm sorry I made it sound like what you feel about the private tier doesn't matter. It matters. I just can't let it change what I do."
He looks at me and his face relaxes. "I know," he says. "I'm not asking you to."
"You kind of were."
"I was." No qualifier. "I was wrong about that. I'm not wrong about the file."
I lean against his shoulder. He puts his arm around me. We sit like that for a while in the lamplight. Not talking. Not performing anything for each other. Just sitting with the specific weight of everything that's real: the file, the fight, the fact thatsomeone has been standing outside my building, and the fact that I am here, in this room, with this man, and the doors are locked and he knows every angle of approach and I feel safe.
I feel safe. That's the thing. Not fine. Not managed. Safe. Which is a different word and a different feeling and I'm not used to it.
He leans down and presses his mouth to my hair. Just that. Soft. Not a move. Just a man putting his mouth on the head of a woman he's worried about.
I turn my face up and kiss him.
It's not urgent. It's not an escalation. It's just a kiss that saysI'm here and you're here and the day is over and I want to be closer to you than talking allows.He kisses me back the same way.
Then, we move to his bedroom. He pulls me against him and I go, and we're just lying in his bed fully clothed with his arm around me and my head on his chest and his thumb moving against my shoulder. The lamp is on. The door is closed.
His thumb keeps moving. My breathing slows. His heart is steady under my ear. I close my eyes and something happens that I wasn't expecting: I relax. Actually relax. Not the performed version. My whole body lets go of something it's been holding since the first time my name showed up in my own chat in someone else's handwriting.
His hand moves from my shoulder to my hair. He strokes it. Slow, repetitive, the way you'd soothe something frightened, and I would normally have a reaction to being treated like something frightened but right now I don't. Right now it's exactly what I need and I press closer to him and breathe.
"Billie."
"I don't want to be in my head tonight," I say against his throat. "I just want to feel you."
He kisses me again. Slower this time, deeper, and I feel the shift — the moment it stops being comfort and starts being something else. Not a sharp line. A gradual change, like the room warming up by degrees. His hand in my hair becomes his hand on my neck becomes his hand sliding down my back, and I arch into him because I want his hands on me.
I reach for him. He catches my hands. Brings them to his mouth. Kisses my knuckles, and the gentleness of it finishes what the hair-stroking started. Something behind my eyes goes hot and I make a sound that is not a sex sound. It's the sound of a woman who has been holding it together for days and has finally, finally put it down.
