She blinked.
“Reasonable.”
“I thought so.”
Her mouth twitched.
Only for a second.
Then she remembered she was furious, and the twitch disappeared.
Goddess help me, I wanted it back.
“And when I cried,” she said, quieter.
Everything in me went still.
There it was.
The thing I had been dreading.
Not the flirting.
Not the bath.
Not the coffee order.
The nights.
The soft ones.
The moments she had not known she was giving to me.
Her voice changed when she continued.
“When I cried into your fur because I missed someone I shouldn’t have missed, or because court had been awful, or because I was lonely and didn’t want to admit it even to myself…”
She swallowed.
I could smell the salt gathering before tears ever reached her eyes.
“You were there.”
My chest hurt.
“Yes.”
“Assho
