I give a small shrug. “Maybe not.”
She looks down at the clipboard, then back at me.
There is a tiny pause.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
Her expression gives me a look I am beginning to recognise. It means do not make me spell out something we both know perfectly well.
I make myself hold still.
“For last night,” she says.
Two words.
No details.
No embroidery.
No mention of the office or her hands in my sweatshirt or the way she had cried into my shoulder as if she hated every second of needing it and needed it anyway.
My chest goes painfully tight.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“I know.” She tilts her head. “I’m doing it anyway.”
“Then you’re welcome.”
She nods once.
Professional.
Contained.
But there is warmth under it now. A thread of it. Fine and dangerous and hard to ignore.
I lift the tote bag slightly. “I brought board games.”
That startles her.
It is worth it.
“You brought board games?”
“Yes.”
“To a fire station?”
“I panicked in the shop.”
“You panicked into board games?”
“It was either that or a tea towel with a sheep on it.”
“Difficult choice.”
