“Am I?”
“Catastrophic.”
A quiet sound escaped him.
Almost a laugh.
The force of my happiness frightened me. I kept my expression gentle.
“What else?” he asked.
“You liked fixing things people had given up on.”
He turned the miniature hull in his hand.
“You liked Marlowe sleeping at the foot of the bed, though you complained about the hair. You liked the harbor before sunrise.”
His gaze lifted to mine.
“And you?”
The question emptied the room of air.
I could have misunderstood.
“What about me?”
“What did I like about you?”
I looked at my hands.
There were hundreds of answers. None were safe.
“You said I made you feel steady.”
He watched me.
“You liked that I listened. You liked my hands.”
Heat rose at the back of my neck despite everything.
His gaze dropped briefly to them.
I continued before the silence became charged.
“You liked that I remembered how you took your coffee. You liked that I didn’t expect you to talk when you weren’t ready.”
“Did I say that?”
“Not all at once.”
“How did you know?”
“Five years.”
He absorbed that.
“Did we fight?”
