"All right," he said. "Green light."
The kitchen was modest and chaotic, arranged by a man who believed storage systems should make sense only to him. I found bread in a drawer, mugs beside the stove, medicine next to oranges, and three types of tea arranged like hidden clues.
From the other room he called, "I can hear you judging my systems."
I had made no sound.
"It has volume." I smiled.
I made soup because it required the least trust in his pantry. My ribs protested every reach and turn, but the work steadied me. Behind me I could hear him shifting occasionally, trying to disguise pain with unnecessary throat-clearing.
When I carried him a bowl, he looked up as though I had handed him something rare.
"You came here injured," he said, "and cooked for me in a kitchen you clearly consider criminal."
I set the bowl down. He took a careful spoonful and closed his eyes.
"This is excellent," he said. "I resent needing you so quickly."
I sat in the chair opposite him. For a while we said nothing. The apartment settled around us with evening sounds: pipes in the walls, distant traffic, the soft clink of spoon against ceramic.
Then Bramwell looked at me for a long moment, something gentler than teasing in his face.
"You know," he said, "I cannot recommend being crushed by unstable terrain."
He took another spoonful.
"But if it ends with you in my kitchen, I'm forced to admit there were highlights."
Chapter 21: Love Out Loud
Two days later, I came home and found Ellis waiting on the front steps with a bouquet of flowers balanced carefully in one arm and two overfilled grocery bags hanging from the other hand.
He stood the moment he saw me. Relief moved across his face so quickly it looked almost like pain before he mastered it into something calmer.
"Where were you yesterday?"
I stopped walking. The question had come out sharper than he intended, and he seemed to hear it himself. His expression softened at once.
"I came by twice," he said more quietly. "I knocked for a while. You didn't answer your phone either."
I said nothing. I just looked at what he was holding. The flowers were beautiful and the grocery bags were heavy enough to bow their handles. He used to do things like that all the time when we were together.
If my shifts ran late, he would appear with dinner already warm. If storms were coming, he stocked my kitchen before I remembered to think of it. When a trail washed out and I spent three days knee-deep in mud marking hazards, he showed up after his station shift and repaired broken fence lines beside me until dark. He sharpened my tools without mentioning it, changed the battery in my truck when it died, hauled feed sacks for the rescue center because he knew my shoulder was bad that month, and once spent an entire Sunday clearing storm branches from ranger paths simply because I had looked tired the day before.
He had always tried to lighten whatever life placed on me.
Standing there now, holding flowers and groceries like instinct had carried him back into old habits, he looked painfully familiar.
"You should have told someone where you were," he said.
His voice was gentle, but worry roughened the edges of it. I looked away. He studied my face quietly, taking in the bruising I had failed to hide, the exhaustion, whatever else had settled there in the last two days.
"You look better."
Still I said nothing.
He gave a small nod, "I brought food," he said, lifting the bags slightly. "Enough for a few days, I think. Soup, fruit, bread, eggs, things that require very little effort. I remembered you never eat properly when your mind is somewhere else."
