"You left."
I don't jump. Somehow, I knew he was there.
Torgan stands in the doorway with lamplight behind him, holding my shawl. The one I left on my chair.
"I needed air," I say.
"It's freezing."
"Then I needed freezing air."
He crosses the courtyard and holds out the shawl. He lets me take it without our fingers touching, and I hate that I notice things like that about him now.
I notice everything about him now. Nine days of silence after the dance, then weeks of him back in his corner at the fittings, polite and absorbed in his newspaper.
"You've been avoiding me," I say.
He frowns. "I've been at every fitting."
"You've been at them the way that bench has been at them." I pull the shawl tight around me. "You watched Brynna's whole wedding from the sidelines. You watch everything from there. And the one time you stepped away to dance with me, you pulled back even farther afterward."
He is quiet for a moment. In the dark, I can't read him at all.
"You're angry," he says. Not defensive. Just certain.
"I'm not angry." I am, a little. "I just don't understand you. Every time you come close, you pull away harder."
I stop before I say something I can't take back.
"Why did you follow me out here?"
"You left," he says again, as if that is a complete answer.
When I keep looking at him, he crosses his arms. "You watch from the sidelines too. I've seen you. You stand at the edge and track everything all night. You never stop working. Tonight is the first time I've seen you leave."
I raise an eyebrow. "So you came to see why?"
"I came to see if you were all right."
The courtyard is very quiet. Somewhere behind the wall, muffled, the violin trio starts another tune.
"That's fair," I say at last. "About watching from the edge."
I sit on the cold bench because standing suddenly feels like work.
"It's easier there. You can love the whole thing from the edge, and none of it asks you for anything back."
"Yes," Torgan says.
Just that. But he says it like I've picked a lock.
Maybe it is the cold. Or the wedding. Or the book of vows with a table of contents.
Whatever it is, I ask him straight.
"What happened to you? And don't say nothing. I'm too tired for nothing."
He is silent long enough that I think I've pushed too far. His breath clouds between us.
