Page 76 of Priest

I laugh, and his smile softens again.

“But seriously,” he says, voice gentler now. “I want you happy. Not steamrolled. Not claimed so hard you disappear under the weight of his feelings. Happy. And if that man wants a place in your life, he needs to learn that loving you means making room for the life you already built.”

Lila reaches for my hand. “You’re allowed to want him and still need more from him.”

The words settle deep.

“I’m not closing the door forever,” I say. “But I’m not opening it just because he knocked loudly.”

“Or picked the lock,” Evan adds.

I point at him. “Exactly.”

Lila squeezes my hand. “Then you’re doing exactly what you should be doing.”

I breathe out, long and steady. “He can want me. He just doesn’t get me without changing.”

Evan’s mouth curves into a familiar, wicked smile. “Make him work.”

I smile back, tired, resolute, and less afraid than I was when they walked in. “Oh,” I say softly. “He will.”

The future still feels uncertain, still tangled in choices I don’t know how to make yet.

But it feels like something I still get to choose.

25

Blue

I feel him before I see him.

It’s stupid. Irrational. The kind of thing I would roll my eyes at if a patient said it out loud. But the air changes when he’s near me. It always has, like something alive snaps tight, a wire pulled too far.

I round the corner toward my apartment, keys already in hand, and there he is.

Sitting on the floor outside my door.

His back is against the wall, long legs stretched out, ankles crossed like he’s settled in for the long haul. A paper bag of groceries rests beside him, folded neatly at the top and placed with the kind of care that makes it obvious he thought about this before he came.

Waiting.

The charge in the hallway spikes so fast it almost makes me dizzy. Of course it’s him. Of course my body recognizes him before my brain has time to put the walls back up.

I stop short and let out a heavy sigh, the kind that slips out when I’m too tired to pretend I’m unaffected. When denial takes more energy than honesty.

He looks up at the sound.

The way his eyes find me, steady and searching, hits just as hard as it ever did. Like being seen fully and without apology. He rises slowly, carefully, not looming and not closing the distance, just standing there like he knows exactly how close he’s allowed to get now.

“Hey,” he says.

I lift my brows.

His mouth twitches, like the next words get away from him before he can stop them. “At least I didn’t break in.”

Despite everything, my mouth betrays me with the faintest twitch.

“I’m trying to respect boundaries,” he adds, nodding toward the grocery bag. “I came prepared to make you a meal again. And talk.”