I shove my hands in my pockets and offer her my elbow. “Maybe you’re the architect after all.”
She takes it. “Or maybe I’m a bit of a coward.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Soon,” she whispers.
I nod.Fair.
We pass a row of brick buildings with tall windows and iron columns running along the sidewalk. I run my fingers across the rough surface as we walk.
“What do you think of these?” I ask.
She tilts her head up at the buildings. “They look historic.”
“I guess they are. Big fire wiped most of Seattle out in the eighteen hundreds.” I gesture loosely around us. “Nothing you’re looking at is original.”
She slows and takes another look around. Iron-wrought balustrades, wooden windows, uneven red brick.
“They preserved the footprint,” I say. “Stronger bones. Fire-resistant materials.”
She glances at me sideways.
My mouth curls. “It’s not the worst metaphor.”
She snorts softly. “I don’t want any more metaphors.” After squeezing my elbow, she slides her hand down, brushing the pad of her thumb against the back of my palm. “Let’s give ourselves today, though. Since we didn’t get to Taliesin.”
“You remember Taliesin?”
Her gaze flicks to mine, and she nods. “I’d been looking forward to it. I should’ve done a better job showing you that.”
Warmth spreads through my chest, quiet and unexpected. Is this what happens after you burn through months of anger in one violent, breathless collision of bodies?
For a few steps, we walk shoulder to shoulder. Our arms brush. The contact is brief, but it sends a strange warmth through my chest.
Maybe the pain isn’t entirely gone. The hollow carved into my chest still feels tender, and Robyn measures every touch like she’s testing the ice on a frozen lake. But the sharp edges are gone. Sanded down enough that we can stand next to each other without bleeding.
Robyn stops near a small square where sunlight spills across the brick, and folds her arms loosely, weight shifting to one hip, gaze moving over the buildings like she’s studying the space instead of me.
She feels it too, this fragile shift between us, but she doesn’t trust it yet.
“Hey,” I murmur.
“Hey.”
The faint edge of my bite mark peeks out beneath the hem of her skirt, and I press my palm to my side where she left her own imprint.
We’d never marked each other before, and I’m not embarrassed. Just… a little awed.
Robyn follows my gaze, then looks back up at me. Her mouth curves faintly. “That was…”
“Yeah.”
The corner of her mouth lifts a little more. “Explosive?”
“For sure.”
“Thank you for trusting me to work through that with me.”
