Page 78 of Wells

I smile, proud of that warning label from him.

His hand slides up my spine, the heat of his palm leaking through the thin silk of my robe. He doesn't kiss me, and we stand like that for several seconds, him looking at me like he hasn't ever looked at me before. My thighs press together on their own, and there it is, the trouble he just warned me about.

"Tell me something," he says.

"About what?"

"You."

I take a sip of coffee, buying time. The question sounds simple, but it isn't, not for me.

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything."

I could deflect, make a joke, change the subject, hand him some polished version of myself that risks nothing. I don't. "I used to teach yoga."

He tilts his head slightly. "Used to? I thought you said you go on Wednesdays to teach the kids."

He remembers. He actually listens.

"I still do that. I meant for real money. I taught five classes a week at a studio in the Marigny, and I loved it."

"Why'd you stop?"

"Time, mostly. The usual reasons people put things down and forget to pick them back up."

He watches me, waiting.

"I plan to do it again, one day. My dream would be to move to Costa Rica and do that full time."

Wells doesn't offer reassurance or tell me I can start again anytime. He just nods, absorbing it.

"What else?" he asks.

"I hate asking for help. I'd rather burn everything down than admit I need something from someone."

"I noticed that about you. We aren't that different, you know. I'm the same way."

"And I count things when I'm anxious. Steps, breaths, cars. Anything I can turn into numbers."

His fingers find mine, threading through them without pressure. "What are you counting now?"

"Nothing."

The truth of it surprises me. I'm not counting anything. I'm just here, sitting with him, talking.

The old urge rises, to crack a joke, to undercut this, to step back before it goes somewhere I can't control.

I sit with it and don't move, letting him keep looking at me.

Wells doesn't say anything. He squeezes my hand once, a quiet acknowledgment, and the silence between us is full now, not hollow.

We finish our coffee in the same easy quiet. Then he stands, pulling me up with him, and we walk back to the bedroom.

Wells buttons his shirt in the soft daylight filtering through my windows, and I watch from the doorway. His jacket is draped over the back of my couch where it landed last night, and his shoes sit beneath the coffee table, one on its side.

He picks up his phone from the counter, checks the screen, and slides it into his pocket. The gesture is ordinary, the kind of thing people do a hundred times a day, but I hold onto it anyway, the picture of him here in my space, moving through it without any rush to be gone.