Page 28 of Coming Home

I slid off the counter and followed her. She was fast for someone who stood a foot shorter than me.

"Emma, stop."

She didn't look back.

"Em, come on. Don't do this."

Still moving. Her small feet slapped against the hardwood with a steady, furious rhythm that let me know she heard every single one of my heavy steps behind her and was intentionally pushing the pace.

She reached the threshold of the sunken entryway, her eyes fixed on the door, and her bare toes caught the sharp lip of the oak step. She stumbled, her shoulder clipping the drywall with a dull thud, but she recovered before I could reach out, instantly straightening her spine, her chin staying parallel to the floor out of sheer spite.

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from letting out a breath. She whipped around so fast her hair slapped her cheek. She hit me with a look that could have curdled cream.

"Don't you dare laugh at me, Brandt."

"I didn't say a word."

She threw her weight against the front door, stepping out into the bright, blinding glare of the sun. I followed her out onto the stone porch, barefoot, still holding the half-eaten apple like a shield.

"Why are you this raw about it?" I called out, trailing her down the flagstone path into the heat. "Is it because you almost kissed me, or because you actually thought you'd lost me?"

She spun on her heel so fast I had to dig my toes into the grass to keep from running her down. The sunlight hit her dead-on, turning her eyes that electric, deep ocean blue I'd been memorizing since we were kids.

Her cheeks were flushed, an angry crimson that made her look sixteen again.

"Even if our lips had made contact," she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper, "it wouldn't have been a kiss, Ralph. It would have been a state-mandated medical intervention."

I looked down at her. The distance between us was less than two feet, the air smelling of wet grass and the heat rising off the driveway. "Going by the strict physics of lip-to-lip proximity⁠—"

"Going by the strict physics of you shutting your mouth⁠—"

"I'm just saying. The intent was rescue, but the geometry was⁠—"

"Then thank God I didn't waste the oxygen," she said, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. "Because I would absolutely hate for your massive ego to mistake an act of basic human CPR for some kind of romantic callback."

I held up both hands, the apple still clutched in my right. "Noted. Strictly clinical. Emergency services only. No subtext."

"None."

"Zero."

"Absolutely zero."

"Got it."

She burned me with another three seconds of pure venom, then turned and started walking toward the edge of the property line, chasing distance for its own sake, which seemed to be her default setting since last night.

"Emma." I caught up in two strides. My legs are twice the length of hers; keeping pace with her furious little march required me to walk at approximately a toddler's velocity, and the sheer effort of keeping that constraint out of my shoulders was taking years off my life. "Stop. Just talk to me for a second."

She didn't halt, but her shoulders dropped an inch, the speed bleeding out of her feet. When she finally turned to look at me, the heat had cleared out of her face. What was left underneath was worse. It was that hollow, defensive confusion I'd been trying to fight since I found her in the rain.

"What are you doing, Ralph?" she asked. "Why are you digging into my life like this? Why do you care where I'm sleeping or if I'm eating? What do you get out of this?"

She stood on my lawn in the glare, her hair still smelling faintly of my shower soap, her blue eyes searching my face for the hook she was certain was hidden behind the bait.

I could have given her the real text. I could have said: Because you handed me a grape popsicle when I was crying under Theo's tree. Because you shoved an earbud into my ear when the noise in my head got too loud and taught me that comfort doesn't need translation. Because you are the most generous person I've ever known and watching a man convince you otherwise makes me want to take things apart with my hands.

Instead, I took a bite of the apple, swallowed, and shrugged. "Beat me in a single lap."