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Not the bruise.
Him.
“Why didn’t you?”
His hands stayed at my waist. One thumb moved once over the fabric of my shirt like it did not know it had done it.
“Because if I said it out loud,” he said, voice low, “then it stopped being mine to manage.”
That was it.
Not macho stupidity. Not some cartoon version of male pride. Fear. The real kind. The kind that sounded almost reasonable until you cared about the person enough to hear how lonely it was.
I touched his face.
“You don’t get points for suffering in silence.”
“No?”
“No. It’s deeply irritating, actually.”
That got me the smile.
Small. Crooked.
Ruined me completely.
I stepped closer. His knees opened automatically, giving me space between them. The heat of him reached for me before his hands did.
“You’re benched,” I said softly.
“What?”
“Sit there. Heal. Eat your noodles. Let me be mad at you for twenty minutes, then maybe I’ll kiss you.”
His hands slid around the backs of my thighs, slow and deliberate, until I was standing flush between his knees and trying very hard not to notice how quickly my own arguments were collapsing.
He tipped his head back just enough to look at me fully.
Then, very gently, as if he were testing the edge of something breakable, he put his mouth against the bare skin just below my ribs.
Not enough to start anything.
Enough to rearrange my breathing.
“Evan.”
“Mm.”
“You are injured.”
“I’m sitting.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s part of the point.”
His mouth stayed there.
