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There's that word.

Special.

I want to believe her. God, I want to believe her.

That's the problem.

Believing it means trusting it. Trusting him. And trust has never come easily to me.

I've spent my career verifying everything. One source isn't enough. Documents matter. Corroboration matters. Evidence matters.

You don't believe something because you want it to be true. That's how people get fooled.

But love doesn't exactly come with independent verification.

There aren't documents.

No second source.

No fucking fact-checker.

At some point, you have to decide whether the person standing in front of you is telling you the truth.

Whether what you're seeing is real. Whether you trust them with the parts of yourself they could break.

And I want to trust Mitchell.

Desperately.

Maybe that's what scares me most. Because I've never had people.

Not like this.

I've had friends.

Colleagues.

Cat.

People I love.

But I've never had this enormous, messy network of people who simply show up for one another.

And tonight, for a few hours, they made room for me. Mitchell made room for me.

I don't know if he realizes that's what he's doing. I'm not even sure I realized it until now. Carolina squeezes my arm.

“Come on. Before they send a search party.”

I laugh.

“Mitchell would.”

“Mitchell absolutely would.”

When we return to the table, he looks up immediately. Finds me with his warm blue gaze. And there goes my heart again.

Maybe taking a leap isn't about knowing someone will catch you.