Her thumb traced the scar.Back and forth.The same small motion, repeated, like a pulse.
“Ask,” she said.
“Ask what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one you get when you’re calculating something.You had it at the bakery.You had it in the parking lot.You’ve got it now.”
He was quiet for a moment.Her hair was spread across his chest, and the weight of her against his side was the least strategic thing he’d ever felt.
“I’m not calculating.I’m deciding how to say something.”
“Just say it.”
“Caleb told me something once.He said being compromised doesn’t mean you’re off the mission.It means you plan for it.”He put his hand over hers on the scar.“I’ve been compromised since the bakery, Maren.Since you sat across from me with your hands wrapped around a coffee cup and told me about a girl who disappeared from your unit.I’ve been planning for it every day since.”
“Planning for what?”
“For the fact that I’m in love with you.And that it changes what I’m willing to risk and what I’m not.”
She lifted her head and looked at him.The lamp light caught one side of her face.The other side was in shadow.
“You don’t have to say that because we just —”
“I’m not saying it because we just.I’m saying it because it’s been true since somewhere between Room 211 and Room 215 this morning, and I’m tired of not saying true things to you.”
She held his eyes.The nurse in her was assessing.The woman in her was deciding whether to believe it.Both of them arrived at the same answer.
“I’m in love with you too,” she said.“I’ve known since Sunday.On the couch.When you told me to read to you because you needed to hear something that wasn’t a briefing.”
“The mystery novel.”
“The mystery novel.Your thumb on my knee.The way you’d memorized the floor plan in four minutes and spent the other sixteen listening to me read about a detective who should have checked the husband’s car.”
“She should have.”
“She did.Chapter Thirty-One.He’d left the gloves in the trunk.”
Graham laughed.The sound surprised him — unfamiliar, loose, startled out of him by a woman who could deliver a plot spoiler naked in bed thirty seconds after telling him she loved him.
She put her head back down.
They lay quiet for a while.The lamp on the bedside table was still on.The hallway light was still on — neither of them had turned it off when they’d come down the hall — and the light made a soft yellow line under the bedroom door.
“Graham.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you eat today?”
“Does coffee count?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
