“No.” He was quiet. “They didn't.”
He looked out at the ocean for a while, and I let him look.
“I'm going to get better,” he said eventually. Not a declaration. More like he was testing the sentence out loud to see how it felt.
“I know.”
“The appointments Dr. Lin wants me keeping, the follow-up stuff, all of it.” He turned his head and looked at me directly, and there was something in his face that was braced and honest at the same time. “I'm going to do it properly this time. Not just enough to get people to stop worrying.”
“Good.” I met his eyes and held them. “And I'm going to be here while you do.”
He held my gaze for a moment. Then he nodded, once, with the particular weight of someone taking something in rather than just hearing it.
The evening came in off the water and I made dinner — something straightforward, pasta, nothing that required me to concentrate harder than the company demanded. He sat at the kitchen counter and kept me company while I cooked, occasionally stealing from whatever was within reach, and I let him and didn't comment on it.
After dinner we sat in front of the windows while the sky went dark and the ocean disappeared into the black except for the white of the breaking waves, and I put my feet up on the coffee table and he tucked himself into the corner of the couch at an angle that ended up with his legs across my lap, and neither of us made any remark about it.
He fell asleep there before ten. I felt his breathing slow and even out against my shoulder, and I sat very still for a long time so I didn't wake him, and watched the ocean move in the dark, and felt something inside my chest that I couldn't name but didn't want to put down.
The third morninghe woke up looking different.
I'd been thinking about the gift since the hospital. I'd swung by the shop on the grocery run the first morning, before he was awake, and the bag had been sitting in my bedroom ever since. I'd picked it up and put it back down twice, second-guessing the timing, but something about watching him pour his own coffee and lean against the counter with the particular looseness of a person who was actually, genuinely resting — it felt right.
I got the bag from the bedroom and brought it out to the kitchen and set it on the counter in front of him.
He looked at it. Then at me. “What's this?”
“A present.”
He looked at the bag again. Then he opened it, and I watched his face as he registered what he was seeing. The confusion melted into surprise, then heat, then a smile that was all edge and want.
“You bought me lingerie,” he said, pulling out the lace stockings and holding them up to the light. “While I was being discharged from a fucking hospital.”
“I bought you lingerie because I remember what you like,” I corrected. “And because I wanted to give you a thing that was about feeling good instead of just surviving.”
He stared at me for a long moment, the stockings still dangling from his fingers, and then he laughed — warm and a little disbelieving, and it hit me square in the chest.
“You're unreal,” he said.
“Try them on.”
His eyebrows went up. “Now?”
“Now.” I held his gaze. “If you want to. No pressure.”
He looked at me. Then at the lingerie. Then back at me.
He took the bag and headed for the stairs without another word, and I stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes with my hands flat on the counter, making myself breathe normally. Then I followed him up.
The bedroom door was open, and I stopped in the doorway.
The stockings ran up his legs, the delicate pattern stark against his skin, held in place by the elastic at his thighs. The underwear sat low on his hips, barely there, and the lace did absolutely nothing to hide how much he wanted this. His tattoos looked even more vivid against the black fabric, and the late afternoon light from the window caught him in profile like he'd been designed specifically to ruin me.
“Fuck,” I said, because it was the only word my brain could access.
Soren turned to face me fully, and the smile on his face was pure confidence mixed with something softer that made my chest pull tight. “You like it?”
“Get on the bed.”
