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I rubbed his back, glad I was the one giving comfort for once instead of the other way around.

The last repair wasn’t hard. A loose towel bar in 4A that took thirty seconds to tighten. The tenant wasn’t even home, which meant I could fix it without making small talk or accepting tea or explaining why I was wearing shorts with sequins on the pockets.

As long as the tenant had given Mrs. Calloway permission to enter, which she had, all was good.

By the time we finished, it was late afternoon. My toolbox felt heavier than it had this morning, but my shoulders felt lighter.

“I’m getting good at this,” I said as we climbed the stairs back to our floor.

“You’ve always been good at it.”

“I’ve been faking it,” I reminded him.

“Faking it and being good at it are the same thing sometimes.”

I unlocked my apartment door—the new deadbolt slid smoothly, no sticking, because Deadeye had replaced it the morning after the break-in—and set the toolbox inside. The apartment smelled like French toast and Deadeye.

That night, the heat finally broke.

The fire escape had been too hot to use for days. The metal stored the heat of the sunlight well past midnight. But a cool breeze came through that evening, and the temperature dropped enough to make the tiny balcony bearable.

I climbed out first, settling onto the metal grating with my back against the railing. Deadeye followed, a blanket tucked under one arm. He sat beside me and draped the blanket over both our legs.

Above us, the sky had gone deep purple then black, and the stars were starting to appear. Not many. The town lights washed out most of them. But a few bright ones pushed through, scattered across the darkness like salt on a table.

I leaned against his shoulder. His arm came around me, pulling me closer, and I let my head rest against the solid warmth of him.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For today. For the repairs. For the French toast. For moving in.” I paused. “For stopping that guy. For asking me properly. Should I keep going?”

His thumb traced a slow circle on my shoulder. “You don’t have to thank me for any of that.”

“I want to.”

“Then thank you too.”

“For what?”

“Being you,” he said.

The breeze lifted the edges of the blanket, cooling my skin as it brushed by.

“I didn’t answer my father,” I said quietly.

Deadeye didn’t ask what I meant, just gave me the space to gather my thoughts.

“He left a message. Said he’d stop paying my rent. I never called him back.”

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s it. I didn’t call him back.”

His arm tightened around me. “That’s a big thing.”

“It feels big. It also feels terrifying.”