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"Twice."

She stared at him. He stared back. Neutral. She held it for three seconds, four, searching for the crack — and found it, barely, in the faint warmth at the edges of his eyes.

She smiled. She grabbed a few fries from her plate and dropped it on his plate.

“So you don't waste away.”

The crack widened and the faint warmth at the edge of his eyes bloomed deeper as his mouth curved upward.

“Brat,” he said affectionately.

Sage swallowed a lump in her throat and said with an air of superiority, “You do know I have extra lollipops, right? If I were you, I would be much much nicer to me.” She smiled even wider at his reaction.

Ooooh, that's definitely a thing.

Then she looked back at her plate, at the half-eaten burger, the remaining fries, and the smile stayed. Quiet. Present.

Because here was the thing.

She was sitting in a booth in a Montana diner across from a man she’d met only twenty-four hours ago.

Her stomach was full. In the kitchen, a woman had called her baby girl, kissed her boy’s cheek, and said, “I’m glad you’re here,” like she meant it. The jukebox played something country — country! — while snow fell soft and steady outside the window. And she was wearing new clothes someone had bought for her with no strings attached.

She felt safe.

The word arrived without permission. It landed in her chest and she felt it — really felt it, the way you feel a comforting hand on your back when you're sick or a warm room after weeks of cold.

Safe.

Not temporary safety. Like the kind you would find from a locked door or a hidden corner or the three hours between Rick leaving and Rick coming back. Real safety that lived in the space between two people when one of them had decided, without conditions, that the other one mattered.

With Felicity she had felt loved — desperately, gratefully — in every tight hug and every whispered, “I’m so proud of you, baby.” But never safe. Maybe because Rick’s shadow had always fallen over both of them.

Definitely not in any parking lot, rest stop, or the back seat of the Jeep with the heater dead and Shadow pressed against her chest for warmth.

Never.

And it terrified her.

Because things that felt safe could be taken away. Things that felt safe could turn. Things that felt safe were just things that hadn't hurt you yet, and Sage Thompson had a lifetime of evidence that yet was only a matter of time.

She looked at Cal across the table.

His gentle hands wrapped around the mug. The faint silver threading his hair, the old scars on his knuckles, and those steady, quiet pewter eyes that hadn’t asked a single thing from her since the moment she’d slid into his booth.

I'm scared.

She wasn’t scared of him — and that was the terrifying part. She was scared of how safe she felt. Scared of the wide-open space where fear used to live, because she had no idea what was supposed to fill it now. Scared that if she let herself really feel this — really believe it, really put her full weight on it, and it broke… she wouldn’t survive the fall.

She picked up a fry. Ate it. Looked out the window.

"Hey, Cal?" she said.

"Mmm."

She didn't look at him. Couldn't, right now, because her face was doing things she didn't trust it to do.

"Thank you," she said. "For…,” her voice trailed off as she looked down at the table. “…all of it."