Her finger has stopped moving against my ribs. The stillness is not cold. It's listening.
"I watched you grow up," I say. "I mean that the way it sounds. Every time I came back to town and Viv would mention your name, or I'd see you for two minutes before I ducked out again — I watched something happening. You were building something. Yourself, this whole entire self, and it was happening right in myperipheral vision and I was too busy being afraid of my reflection to look directly at it." My jaw tightens. "I spent years making you feel invisible. The actual worst irony of my life is that you were never invisible. You were the most visible thing in every room. I just couldn't let myself look."
She sits up. Not to leave — she moves slowly, the knot still keeping us joined, and turns so she can look at my face. Her eyes are dry. She's not crying, but her expression has shed its last layer of professional distance, and what's underneath is younger and much more honest.
"Do you know what I did with it?" she asks.
I wait.
"Every time you said something cutting and walked away laughing, I went home, and planned." Her voice is steady. Precisely steady, the way it gets when she's carrying more than she's naming. "I decided I was going to be so good at what I did that nobody would ever be able to look through me again. Not you, not anyone. I built my entire life on not being dismissible." A pause. "So I suppose technically I owe you something."
"You don't owe me a goddamn thing."
"I know I don't." The faintest pull at her mouth. "I was being generous."
My chest cracks open in the best possible way. I bring my hand to her face, cupping her jaw, my thumb resting against her cheekbone, and I look at her — really look, the way I should have been looking for years.
"I want to earn it," I say. "Not the bond. That's done; it's permanent; you're stuck with me biologically, and I'm sorry if that's not your first choice. But the trust. The — " I search. "Theright to be in your corner without you waiting for the moment I make it into a joke. I want to earn that." My thumb moves once across her cheekbone. "I will spend every day we have doing exactly that if you'll let me."
Her eyes hold mine. The silence stretches long enough that my pulse logs three separate counts.
"You know you're going to have to actually do the work," she says. "Not just say it once beautifully and consider it handled."
"I know."
"I'm not a project, Roan."
"I know that too."
"And I'm not going to shrink myself to make you comfortable."
"Good." My other hand finds her waist, thumb pressing against the curve of it. "I want you exactly as you are. I need someone that size in my life. I've needed her for a long time without knowing her name." Her chin dips. I feel the small exhale against my chest. "You scared the hell out of me the moment you walked into that dinner. Not just because of the bond. Because you looked at me and I knew you saw every single layer I was hiding behind, and you weren't even slightly impressed."
"I wasn't," she confirms. A breath. Then quietly: "I am now."
I close my eyes briefly. Open them. "Then let me keep earning it."
She reaches up and covers my hand with hers where it rests against her face. Her fingers curl around mine, and she turns her head just slightly and presses her lips to the inside of my wrist, warm and deliberate, and that small claiming actdestroys anything that came before it. She didn't just accept. She answered.
The bond settles deeper. Both directions.
The shower is warm and the bungalow bathroom is cramped in the way island bathrooms always are — barely room to turn, the tile cold on the periphery and the water pressure better than expected. I keep one hand at the back of her neck, working the shampoo through her hair, loving how her curls flatten and stretch. Remarkable. She stands with her eyes closed and lets me. It's the largest act of trust she's offered yet. Sharma Kinsey doesn't let people take care of her. Right now she's standing still under my hands with her eyes closed.
I don't say anything about it. Some things you don't name while they're happening.
"The South Asian pitch," she says, after a while. Her eyes are still closed. "The one we're supposed to start working on…"
My hands slow in her hair. "The Vaughn Industries expansion strategy."
"You've read my work."
"Grayson forwarded it to me six weeks ago and told me to hire you, and I told him we didn't need outside help and I've been kicking myself ever since." Her eyes open at that. I keep working through her hair. "It's brilliant. The regional pivot alone would pull us fix three markets where we're bleeding. Your demographic breakdown made me feel physically stupid, and I've been in this industry for twelve years."
She is quiet long enough for the water pressure to shift and settle. "You were going to bring it to Liam and Grayson," she says.
"I am going to bring it to Liam and Grayson. With you." I rinse the shampoo through, watching it run in white rivulets down her nutmeg back, tracing over the rises and falls, and my fingers don't resist following the soft lines to her round bottom. "You'd present it. It's yours. I'd be there as — " I consider. "Logistical support. And because you shouldn't have to walk into a room with all three of them without someone in your corner."
"I've walked into harder rooms alone."
