“Elite level.”
“Could medal.”
“Podium for sure.”
She laughed again, and this one had more air in it.
I caught her chin gently and turned her face toward mine. “We’re going to need help.”
“With what?”
I gave her a look.
She rolled her eyes. “Emotionally, yes, obviously. I was hoping you meant moving a couch or something less humiliating.”
“I mean us. Separately too, probably.”
“That sounds like therapy.”
“It does.”
“I hate that we’re people who need therapy.”
“I think everybody needs therapy. We just need the varsity package.”
She stared at me for a second, then laughed hard enough to fold into my shoulder.
I wrapped an arm around her, and for the first time since I walked through her door, the protective thing in me didn’t feel sharp. It felt steady. Heavy, but steady.
She settled against me, her cheek against my chest, her fingers tracing the lines of my ribs. “Tell me about your mom.”
I looked down at her. “My mom?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to keep discussing the legal and emotional collapse of our lives?”
“I am scheduling that for later. Right now, I want your mom, because apparently she bullied you into emotional literacy, and I respect her work.”
My mouth curved. “She’d like that.”
“She’d like me?”
“She’d probably pretend to be cautious for eight minutes, then ask if you eat enough and whether your parents know you drive too fast when you’re upset.”
“I do not drive too fast.”
“You drive like the law is a suggestion you helped draft.”
“That is slander.”
I pressed my mouth to her hair. “She would like you.”
Aura went still in my arms. “You said that earlier.”
“I meant it earlier.”
She traced a small circle over my chest. “You told her about me?”
