I didn’t feel like I had to earn it.
I smiled.
By the time the fire had settled, exhaustion caught up with me. It didn’t knock me out though, but it did buzz under my skin and refused to shut up.
Arthur shifted on the couch, then looked at me like he was checking for damage he might have missed.
“Are you ready for bed?” he asked.
“Kind of,” I said. “But if I try to sleep right now my brain willthrow a tantrum.”
He nodded, his gaze drifting around the room over the books, the fire, until it landed on the side table and the puzzle on top of it—a landscape of greens and blues with a ridiculous number of pieces.
He lifted his eyebrows at me in a silent question.
I smiled. “Yes, let’s do that.”
He did not hesitate. He dumped the pieces onto the coffee table in a messy avalanche. I laughed despite myself. Loud. Uncontained.
We sat next to each other on the couch. Close enough that our thighs touched.
Neither of us moved away.
Ignoring the obvious tension, we started sorting the pieces into piles—edge pieces, colors, sky, ground. His knee bumped against mine once, then again. Each time was a little less accidental.
“This isn’t an efficient activity,” he said.
“It’s calming, though,” I replied.
“That doesn’t make it more efficient.”
I rolled my eyes. “It makes it fun.”
He glanced at me, his lips twitching with a smile. Liquid heat pooled low in my belly, and my mind flashed back to the fantasy I’d had in the shower. I shifted slightly, trying to banish it from my mind.
We continued working in silence for a few minutes. Our hands brushed, stayed close, pulled back, brushed again.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
I braced myself out of habit. “Okay.”
“Would you like to tell me more about your parents?”
My hands froze over a light blue puzzle piece.
I didn’t look at him, instead keeping my gaze firmly on the table and the shape in my fingers. “My mom always treated me like I took up too much space,” I said finally. “Physically. Emotionally. All of it.”
He didn’t interrupt.
“I was too curvy. Too loud. Too opinionated. Too present. Everything about me was framed as a problem to be managed.”
My chest tightened, but I kept going.
“My dad let it happen,” I said. “He never defended me. He just… stood there and acted like neutrality was kindness.”
I glanced up then. Arthur’s face was very still, but I saw the shock, the anger, and the disbelief that sat beneath his carefully constructed control like a live wire.
That warmed something deep in my chest—not because I wanted him angry, but because he was angryforme.
