"I can't just fly to Texas."
A pause. Small.
"Why not?"
I sat up. I needed to be sitting up for this. I needed to not be tucked under his arm when I said it because being tucked under his arm made everything feel possible and I needed to think clearly about what was actually possible.
I also needed to not say the thing I was actually thinking, which was that I had never been on a plane. Not once. Not a regional puddle jumper, not a connection through Atlanta, not anything. The helicopter last night had been the first time I'd been off the ground in anything, and I'd been blindfolded for the drive to the field and Tommy's hand had been the only thing between me and the terror of not knowing what came next. A plane to Texas was a different proposition entirely, and I couldn't say that out loud because it was one more thing on the list of things I didn't know how to do that he'd figured out so long ago he'd forgotten it had ever required figuring.
"Because I have a schedule," I said. "Because some people have to keep a schedule. Because I have a double shift today that I cannot miss because I have rent coming due and groceries to buy and—" I stopped. Breathed. "Because my whole life right now is built around not falling behind, and I am finally, for the first time since I got to Charleston, starting to not fall behind, and I cannot just—get on a plane to Texas like it's a walk to the Battery."
He sat up, too.
He looked at me with the level, patient attention that I normally found steadying and right now found slightly maddening because I wanted him to understand that I was serious.
"I'll pay for the ticket," he said.
There it was.
I felt it land the way Clayton's words landed—quiet, precise, in exactly the soft place.
"I know you will," I said.
"Rebecca—"
"I know you will. That's the problem, Tommy. That's—" I pulled the sheet up, a reflex I recognized as armor even as I did it. "You say things likeI'll pay for the ticketandcome stay at my hoteland you buy flowers and you arrange helicopters and—I know that's just another day for you. I know the math is different. But from where I'm standing it looks a lot like?—"
"Like what?"
"Like charity."
The word sat between us.
Tommy's face didn't do anything dramatic. It didn't flinch or close. But something moved behind his eyes—something that wasn't quite hurt and wasn't quite frustration and was somewhere between them, the expression of a man who'd been misread and was deciding how to respond to it.
"It's not charity," he said.
"It feels like it."
"I know it does." He said it level. "And I understand why. But it's not."
"We've known each other three days."
"I know."
“Three days, Tommy. I don't—I can't let someone I've known three days start paying for things. That's not—that's not who I am. I've been taking care of myself since I was old enough to work a shift, and I'm not going to stop because some man decided?—"
"Some man." His voice was still level but there was something under it now. "Is that what this is?”
"I didn't mean?—"
"Because I'm not some man, Rebecca Lynn. I think you know that."
I looked at him.
He was right. I knew that. I'd known it since he crouched on a restaurant floor for me, and I'd been knowing it more with every hour since, and the knowing was exactly the problem because it made the fear underneath all of this so much larger than it would have been with some man.
"I love you," he said.
