Then I push off the doorframe and join them.
After I’ve eaten, I make my way to my bedroom. Olivia’s in bed, curled on her side, her dad's cardigan still around her shoulders, one hand open on the pillow beside her. She’s not asleep. I can tell by her breathing.
She doesn't ask where I've been.
I get in beside her, and she turns without a word and presses her face against my chest, and I put my arms around her, and we lie in the dark. I stare at the ceiling and breathe.
I close my eyes.
Patrick Holt is gone.
Leo is still out there.
It won’t be long, until I get rid of him.
I start moving Olivia’s stuff into my place, her books go on the shelf beside mine. Her spare charger on the desk. The small photograph of her parents goes on the bedside table on her side, and I put it there carefully and don't say anything about it and neither does she.
I move all her stuff in while she’s at the hospital, not wanting her to fight with me about why we shouldn’t move it together.
"You moved my things in," she says.
"Noticed that, did you?"
"Hayden."
"You were at the hospital. I had time."
"Thank you," she says quietly.
"Don't mention it," I say, and I mean that literally, and she knows I mean it, she nods once and comes into the room and that's the end of it. I’m happy because she’s not going to win and argument with me about this.
It’s been a week since the funeral and she finally laughs at something.
A proper laugh, not the small, startled kind that escapes before she can catch it. A real one, head tilted, shoulders moving, the laugh I know better than I know most things.
Mason says something idiotic over the phone on speaker, and she laughs, and I'm sitting at the desk with my back to her, I go very still and just listen to it.
She's coming back. Slowly.
I turn around and she's already looking at me, the laugh still on her face, and she catches my expression, and her smile softens into something quieter.
She ends the call to Mason and asks. "What?"
"Nothing," I say.
She looks at me for a second longer. Then she uncurls from the bed and crosses the room and kisses me, soft and easy, one hand against my jaw.
When she pulls back her eyes are bright.
Not with grief this time, but with something else, I love looking into her eyes.
“Olivia,” I say, my voice already rougher than I mean it to be.
She doesn’t answer with words. She just steps closer until her bare thighs brush mine, and I can feel the warmth radiating off her skin. Her fingers slide from my jaw to the back of my neck, threading into my hair, and she kisses me again, still gentle, still careful, like she’s asking permission even though we both know the answer.
My hands find her waist, thumbs stroking the soft dip above her hips. I pull her in slowly, guiding her until she’s straddling my lap on the edge of the chair. She settles there with a tiny sigh against my mouth; it’s like coming home. Her arms loop around my neck, mine wrap around her lower back, holding her close enough that I can feel every small shift of her breathing.
We kiss like that for long minutes.
