The effect is immediate and unwelcome. Something tightens in my chest before I can stop it, and I look away a fraction too late to pretend I wasn’t staring. Across the room, Bron raises one eyebrow with faint amusement, the expression so familiar that it feels like someone has quietly reached into my ribcage and twisted a memory loose.
He pushes away from the bar a second later and begins walking toward me.
“Don’t,” I murmur under my breath, though the warning is clearly meant for myself more than for him.
Predictably, he ignores it.
Bron drops onto the couch beside me with the comfortable ease of someone who has occupied that space many times before. “Hey,” he says, his voice carrying the faint rasp of someone who spent the day shouting over engines and wind.
“Hello,” I reply without looking directly at him.
“You look like you’re thinking too hard again.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“That explains a lot.”
I keep my eyes on the condensation sliding down the side of my glass. The droplets gather at the bottom and drip slowly onto the table in tiny cold circles, and I focus on that simple, unimportant detail because it feels easier than acknowledging the quiet presence sitting beside me.
“That elimination course was brutal,” Bron says after a moment.
“Understatement.”
“You handled it well.”
“I handled it correctly,” I reply, because precision feels safer than praise.
He tilts his head slightly. “That’s what I meant.”
“No,” I say calmly. “You said well. I’m clarifying.”
For a moment he simply watches me, the amusement in his expression fading into something more thoughtful.
“You always do that,” he says eventually.
“Do what?”
“Turn everything into a technical problem instead of an emotional one.”
“That’s because technical problems are easier to solve.”
“And emotional ones?”
I finally look at him. “Are usually disasters.”
A faint laugh escapes him, though there’s something quieter beneath it. “Well,” he says, stretching his legs out in front of him, “that explains the last two years.”
The words land with unexpected force. I feel them like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples through thoughts I have spent a long time keeping carefully contained.
“We’re not doing this tonight,” I say firmly.
“Doing what?”
“Digging through the past like it’s some archaeological dig.”
He rests his elbows on his knees and studies me with unsettling focus. “You left.”
“Yes.”
