"Then how does it work?"
I take half a step closer. Not enough to crowd her. Enough that she has to feel the heat of me.
"You tell me, and I do."
Her breath catches.
I hear it more than I see it—a small hitch in the space between us.
She holds my eyes for a long moment. I can see her pulse going at her throat where the chain disappears under her t-shirt.
Her hand comes off the rail. She doesn't put it on my arm this time.
She puts it on the front of my shirt, flat against my chest, just over the place where my pulse is doing things I haven't felt it do since I was about twenty-five years old.
She says, low, "I'm tired of being polite, Rogue."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
I look down at her hand on my chest. I look back at her face.
She's not blinking. She's not breathing right.
She's standing on her porch barefoot at near midnight with her hand on a man she's known for two months, and her eyes are telling me the rest of the sentence she didn't finish out loud.
I put my hand under her jaw.
Just my fingers. Light. The pad of my thumb finds the spot beneath her ear where her pulse is going.
“Hadley?”
She lifts her chin so her eyes meet mine. The light from her kitchen window catches in them. Green. Bright. Wider than they were a second ago.
"Yeah?"
The word is barely a word. It comes out like she's been holding her breath for it.
"You sure."
I keep my voice low. I keep my thumb where it is, just below her jaw, the pad of it resting against the pulse beneath her ear. I can feel her heart going under my hand. It's going fast.
"I'm sure."
"Say it."
I need to hear it twice. I need her to hear herself say it twice. If she takes this back tomorrow morning, it's not gonna be because I didn't give her the room to.
Her hand on my chest tightens. Not much. Just enough that I feel her grip change. Her fingers gather a fistful of my shirt. "I'm sure, Rogue."
I close my eyes for a half second. I let myself feel the words land before I move.
Then I take my hat off slowly.
I set it on the porch rail beside her hand. The brim of it rests against her knuckles. Her fingers don't move away from it.
She knows what the hat means. Texas-raised. She knows.
