“You slept. That was the job.” He pauses. “Eleven breaths a minute, mostly. Twelve since this morning.”
“You counted my breathing.”
“Every one I was awake for.”
I look at his face, at his hands, which won’t quite settle on his knees, and I know he was awake for almost all of them.
“The healer wanted you in the wing,” he says.
“I’m not in the wing.”
“No.” He doesn’t explain it, and he doesn’t need to. I look past him at the room instead—his blanket, his walls, the window with the ridgeline going gray-blue outside. The last time I stood in here, we were shouting at each other. It feels smaller now. I don’t hate it anymore.
More of it comes back while I finish the water. The green slats in the fence. The band on my wrist. Blood spreading under a door. A bear too big for the doorway.
My bear.
“The site’s finished,” he says, watching me put it together. “Cleared out. Nobody who was standing in it is standing now.”
“Serenity—” I start, and stop, because I already know, and saying it hurts.
“I know.” His jaw tightens. “They told us after. I’m sorry. We went in for both of you—”
“She was gone before I ever sent a message.” My voice is steady. The grief is there, but it’s been there for days. “I foundout at their front desk. You were right, and I paid everything to prove you wrong, and I did it for nothing.”
“Don’t.” His voice roughens. “Don’t do that to yourself. You made a mistake for someone you love. I could never hold that against you.”
“Okay.” I set the glass down. “Not tonight. She’s alive somewhere, and tomorrow I start again, and this time I don’t do it alone. But tonight I can’t hold on to her and be here with you at the same time. I don’t have it in me.”
He nods. He’s close now, and his eyes haven’t left my face.
“I hated you,” I say. “In this room. For about a day.”
His jaw flexes, but he takes it.
“Then I stood at the fence in the dark and watched you guard my window while I walked out behind your back, and I couldn’t keep hating you after that. None of what I did was about you being wrong.”
“I know why you went.” His voice drops. “I’d have gone too. I did go. Just later, and louder.” His thumb finds the inside of my elbow, over the bruise where their tape was. “I should have told you everything the day I knew it. All of it.” His thumb stays there. “I kept telling myself I was taking the weight off you.”
“You weren’t the one carrying it,” I say. “I was. Always.”
“I know. I knew it while I was doing it anyway.”
The space between us has closed without either of us moving much. His hand is warm over the bruise, and my heart is going faster. From the way his nostrils flare, he hears it before I do.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he says. He doesn’t move back.
I reach up and take a fistful of his shirt.
“Then get down here and rest with me.”
I pull, and he comes, braced on one arm so his weight lands anywhere but on me. He kisses me slowly, like he’s taking something back that was his. It doesn’t stay slow. My mouthopens under his, and the sound he makes is raw. His hand slides up my arm to my jaw, and I can feel it shaking.
I get my hands under his shirt, and he breaks off long enough to pull it over his head. Then I’m touching all of him—the muscle, the old scars, two new red lines across his ribs that weren’t there before that building. He strips the sleep shirt off me, one of his own that someone must have put me in, and drops it off the side of the bed. His mouth goes to my throat, the hollow between my breasts, working lower, and I lose track of everything but where he is.
“Easy,” he says against my skin when my hips lift. “We’ve got all day.”
“We had a whole week, once,” I say. “I want the day to keep up.”
