Page 41 of Coming Home

"I understand," he said.

He accepted the limit. Calmly. Without demanding a single ounce of emotional currency to pay for my hesitation.

And that—far more than the heat of the kiss, more than the music, more than the silver light on the water—was the exact realization that made my eyes sting with hot tears.

He heard my voice, believed my words, and let me have the space I required without extracting a price.

I carefully climbed off his lap, returning to the driver's seat. My face was flushed. My lips were swollen. My hands were trembling against my knees.

"Solamente Una Vez" was playing now. The universe was being actively cruel with the tracklist.

"For the record," Ralph said, staring straight ahead through the windshield at the rolling gray sets, "I've been waiting for the clearance to do that since I was seventeen years old."

"Seventeen?" I turned my head, staring at his profile.

"Seventeen."

"You were catastrophically terrible at showing it."

"I was exceptionally disciplined at hiding it. There's a vast difference."

I looked at him, catching the hard, beautiful line of his jaw. He turned his head, his eyes meeting mine.

For one suspended, perfect moment, it was simple: just Ralph and me, two kids who'd grown up tangled in the same life and lost years to all the wrong turns, finally still in the same place at the same time.

Then his phone screamed.

The digital display lit up violently on the console between our seats, the incoming caller ID glowing in bold, aggressive text that might as well have been a red flare.

Theo.

My entire spine locked. My brother's name pulsing on the screen, less than two minutes after I'd been wrapped around his best friend with enough heat to fog the side windows.

Ralph's eyes snapped to mine across the short distance. He didn't reach for the device.

I shook my head fast. Emphatic. The universal, terrified signal for do not, under any circumstances, let him know I'm with you.

Ralph held my gaze, his expression steady, unreadable. His large hand moved slowly toward the console.

I shook my head harder, my eyes wide.

His index finger hovered a millimeter above the glass.

"Don't tell him," I whispered.

He held my eyes for one final, agonizing second. Then he slid his finger across the screen and lifted the phone to his ear.

"Hey," he said. His voice was perfectly level. Infuriatingly, seamlessly normal.

"What's up, man?"

CHAPTER 15

Emma

He'd been gone for seven days, and I missed him with a dull, persistent ache that would have mortified me if I'd had to admit it to anyone else.

Except Nadia, of course. Nadia knew before I even opened my mouth, because she was the only one who truly understood how empty a house could feel the moment a specific person stepped across the threshold and shut the door behind them.