“You don’t have to answer right now,” she says quickly.
I cannot speak.
“It’s okay if it’s too soon.”
Still nothing.
“I know thresholds matter to you. I remember what you said. I’m not trying to corner you or make assumptions or turn this into some big dramatic demand.” Her voice trembles slightly. “I just love having you here, and I hate imagining you going back to the tunnels every night like this place isn’t open to you.”
I grip the edge of the counter behind me.
The metal bends faintly under my hand.
She stops talking.
My silence has hurt her.
I see it happening and still cannot force words through the sudden constriction in my throat.
Move in.
A home.
Her home.
With me in it.
The old life inside me recoils. People who share homes become targets. People who belong somewhere can be found. People who expect mornings together learn what absence does. Every body I failed to carry on Horus IV rises between me and that simple invitation.
Evie’s face softens, but pain shadows her eyes. “Kauss?”
I manage one sentence.
“It is a big step.”
The words land wrong the instant they leave me.
I see it in her face.
Not anger yet.
Worse.
The first quiet fracture of rejection.
CHAPTER 23
EVIE
“It’s a big step.”
The words do not land like words.
They land like a door closing.
The sauce bubbles behind me on the little stove, thick and red and fragrant with garlic, tomatoes, basil, and the ridiculous amount of black pepper Kauss insists is “insufficient” no matter how much I add. Rain slides down the apartment windows in silver ropes, blurring Halo’s lights into watery streaks of blue, gold, and dirty pink. The old heater clicks beneath the sill. Somewhere below us, the bakery settles for the night with soft groans of wood and pipe, the familiar body of the building breathing under our feet.
I stand in my kitchen with a towel twisted between my hands and hear my own heart break with insulting clarity.
