“Healing.”
“Did you see a doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor for that.” She said it with no drama.
“Fallon, what happened at that gate wasn’t normal.”
“I know it wasn’t normal. I was the one doing it.”
“Then you know it’s the kind of thing that needs medical attention.”
“What I know is how my body works. I’ve been managing it for a long time.”
Managing. Like an illness or permanent ailment. He pressed his palm against his forehead. This wasn’t a woman shrugging off a one-time injury. This was someone describing a relationship with her own body that he understood nothing about.
“It wasn’t the first time you’ve done that,” he said.
She didn’t answer right away. “No.”
“And you’re not going to tell me why.”
“Not tonight.”
Something in her voice shifted on those two words. A door closing gently, but not locking. He heard the difference and decided to let it stand.
“Okay,” he said. “Different question.”
“Should I be nervous?”
“Why did you do it? At the gate. Instead of just staying and talking to me.”
She was quiet long enough that he started counting. Four seconds. Five. He could hear something on her end, the creak of what might have been a chair.
“I couldn’t stay,” she said. “I know you wanted me to, but I couldn’t.” She stopped. The silence stretched. He opened his mouth to fill it, to give her an out, to say something that would ease the weight of whatever she was trying to get to. He caught himself and closed his mouth and waited.
“I was in the middle of something,” she said finally, coming at it from a different angle. “Something that mattered. And I couldn’t take a chance on it falling apart, no matter how much I wanted to stay and talk to you.”
“I wouldn’t have turned you in even if you’d been twirling a diamond bracelet around your finger singinglook what I stole.”
“I couldn’t take the chance.”
He let that land.
“Then promise me something.”
“Isaac.”
“Never do that again. Never break your own body to get away from me.”
“You don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I understand enough to know that I never want to see you go through that sort of pain again. Especially not because you see me as a threat. As long as you’re not hurting people, I’m not coming after you. I won’t turn you in. I won’t report you. I won’t use what I know against you. And I’m asking you to promise methat you will never do what you did at that gate again. Not to get away from me.”
The line went quiet. He could hear her breathing. Could almost hear her thinking, the particular silence of someone measuring a promise against everything it would cost to keep it.
“I promise,” she said.
Her voice was steady. He believed her.
