Page 98 of Wells

I don't finish.

Wells's hand tightens on my shoulder.

"The driver of the first car?"

"She didn't make it."

My voice cracks, just enough, and I hate it.

"Locke called me from the ambulance. He sounded fine, made jokes like he does."

Wells shifts, pulling me tighter against him, and his breath stirs my hair.

"He's really okay?"

"Yeah. Bruised ribs and airbag burns. They discharged him after a few hours. He was out by the time dinner was over."

Wells doesn't say anything. His hand keeps moving across my back, and the silence stretches between us, heavy but not uncomfortable.

I press closer, needing the warmth of him, the solid weight of his body against mine.

"It really shook me up,” I admit.

Wells' chest rises and falls beneath my cheek, steady and slow.

"I bet. Car accidents are..." He trails off.

"Yeah."

Wells' hand keeps moving across my back, steady and slow, and after a while, the rhythm makes the silence less heavy. "My mom was killed in a car accident too. A semi, same as your friend."

"Jesus, Wells. I'm so sorry."

"It was really hard. I was nine."

I don't say anything. I hold him. That explains a lot about him. A nine-year-old boy losing his mom must have been catastrophic.

"My mother loved New Orleans. It's the main reason I've never left for good. This city is her."

His voice is low, the words coming slowly, and I go still against him because I recognize what this is: an offering.

"Most of her life was spent trying to save the bones of it. She loved old houses, the ones people wanted to tear down for condos. She'd buy them, restore them, make them matter again."

I don't interrupt. I barely breathe.

"There's a mansion in the Garden District called the Creston House. Have you ever heard of it?"

"It sounds vaguely familiar."

"She bought it when I was young, and spent years planning how she would bring it back. She died before it was finished, but it's on the historic registry now and open for tours. It gets me that one of the things she left behind has thousands of strangers walking through it every year."

He pauses, his chest rising and falling beneath my cheek.

"I'd love to see it someday."

"I'll take you."

It's not grand, not a promise wrapped in poetry. It's a fact, plainly said, and somehow that makes it bigger. He wants to share his mom with me.