I stay.
The knot holds us a long time.
"Bane will smell like seawater. Whenever we’d go to the beach as kids it always stuck out to me. I don't know what it is. It clings to him for days."
"Mm."
"Zero won't sleep when he gets back. He never does after a vacation. He'll be on the back porch at sunrise for a week."
"...okay."
"I set up coffee for the morning. Ready to go. The good beans. You'll like it."
He drifts on like that, soft, half to me and half to himself. Updates on the brothers. The week ahead. The driveway needingto be sealed. Anything. The kind of low murmur a person uses when they have nothing they need to say and want to stay close anyway.
I should be melting into it.
I am, mostly.
But somewhere underneath, the thought I have been holding back since yesterday at the kitchen island is rising slow.
Tell me about work.
I close my eyes against it. He keeps murmuring. Something about a contractor. Something about Richard's birthday next month.
Tell me about the long project.
His thumb strokes the back of my hand on the pillow.
Why did Richard know you were about to be traveling and I didn't.
I clamp down on it.
Too late.
The bond shifts.
I feel him feel me.
The thrum that was warm and full a second ago goes alert, focused, narrowing. His mouth lifts off the bite. His thumb stops moving at my lip.
"What is it?" His voice is quiet. Not alarmed. Just present.
I keep my eyes closed.
"Nothing."
"Max."
"It's nothing."
"Sweetheart. Look at me."
I don't.
He tilts my chin gently with his fingers. He doesn't force me. He just waits. The bond between us is wide open and I cannot lie in it, not really, but I have been lying my whole life and I know how to do the next-best thing, which is to redirect.
I open my eyes.
