I'm not going anywhere.
Send it. Set the phone on the counter.
Dante watches me do it. Then he pulls out his own phone, types something I can't see, sends it, and puts the phone back in his pocket without showing me.
"I want to go find him," I say. "I want to walk out that door, find him on whatever bench he's sitting on, put my arms around him, tell him I'm sorry."
"I know."
"But if I do that right now, if I chase him, I'm reaching again. I'm pulling him back into the role. He said don't reach for me. He said if I reach, he'll let me and it'll start over."
Dante nods once.
"So I stay here," I say. "And I wait."
"Yeah."
"I hate waiting."
"I know you do."
The refrigerator hums. A pipe clicks somewhere in the wall. The old house settles around the silence.
"Dante."
"Yeah."
"Come here."
He looks at me. The space between us is the space where Cole stood, and neither of us has crossed it since he left.
Dante stands and crosses the kitchen, stopping in front of me.
Close. Inside the perimeter I keep around my body. Inside the distance only two people have ever crossed, and one of them just walked out the door.
I look up at him. His face is close, his eyes still red-rimmed, his jaw tight. His composure holds in the set of his jaw, but his eyes stay red and his hand flexes once at his side.
"We did this to him," I say quietly. The words scrape on the way out.
His jaw works. He doesn't look away.
His hand lifts slowly, the way it lifted in the office weeks ago, stopping an inch from my jaw in an almost-touch. This time, he keeps going. His fingers make contact, and his palm settles against my cheek, warm, with his thumb resting along my cheekbone.
Holding.
Every other time Dante Voss has put his hands on me, his touch has carried voltage. Command. Heat. The gravity of a man who takes up space by design. This time, his palm is warm against my cheek, and his fingers tremble once before he stills them.
I close my eyes and put my hand over his, pressing it harder against my cheek.
We stand in the kitchen with his hand on my face, my hand over his, and the house quiet around us. The cold coffee on the counter. The scrubbed pan in the rack. Two mugs out, mine and his. Cole's still in the cabinet.
"When he comes back," I say, my eyes still closed, "I'm going to hold him. I've never done that. He's always been the one holding me, and I don't know what it looks like from the other direction."
"You'll figure it out."
"What if I do it wrong?"
"You'll do it wrong. He'll feel you trying. That's the part that matters."
