I dip my chin, realizing we didn’t hide behind intimacy. We laid it all out, ugly and raw.
For a moment, we just stand there while the city hums around us. A bus sighs to a stop down the street. Someone laughs outside a café. Normal life, continuing like nothing shattered or took root between us.
“I meant what I said earlier,” I say.
Her brows knit slightly.
“It would be different. It could be a lot like before—but better.”
She studies me carefully, testing the structure of words before stepping onto them.
“Sometimes, I believe that,” she says after a moment.
Her voice is warm, but the hesitation in the crease of her brows is unmistakable. And honestly… it should be.
“There’s a lot to figure out,” I admit.
That earns me a longer look.
She lets out a gusty sigh. “Even after this morning… I’m not where we left off.”
“Of course not. How could you be?”
She exhales, shoulders lowering a fraction. “Would you take it very slow?” she asks. “From the very beginning?”
“Robyn, sweetheart, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
We start walking again, slower now. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets, then pull one out and brush against her, and the back of her hand grazes my knuckles as we move.
“It’s the only honest place to start. You know,” I add, nodding toward a building across the street, “when they rebuilt this area, they actually raised the streets. The old city is basically underground now.”
She laughs quietly.
“I don’t think we get to do that,” she says after a moment.
“No?”
“Bury the old and pretend it’s gone.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what they did. Nor what I’d want to do.”
Her gaze lifts to mine just as we reach the middle of the square and stop again.
“I can’t promise it’ll work out,” she says.
The afternoon light catches in her hair. I’m hit with the same feeling I had the first time I realized I was falling for her years ago. She looks steady, but her fingers twist the edge of her sleeve. Her shoulders hold a faint tension, eyes glued to the toes of her shoes.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “I’m fucking scared too.”
Standing here in the rebuilt bones of an old city, I don’t feel like my future’s dead and buried anymore. It feels like we finally cleared enough debris to pour a new foundation. It’s not perfect, nor do I need it to be. I just need it toholdstrong enough that maybe, just maybe, we’re brave enough to build again.
CHAPTER 33
The Vulnerability
Robyn
Nateand I walk downtown with ice cream melting faster than we can keep up in the humid heat of mid-summer Bend. My scoop threatens to fall over while his looks unfairly perfect. We’re talking about a video he sent me last night—some hyper-realistic, architectural monstrosity that turned out to becake.
