“You don’t have to stay,” Emma says.
Christina shakes her head.
“No.”
Her voice is steady.
“I’m not leaving. I’m fine.”
I believe her.
That isn’t the part that unsettles me.
What unsettles me is how easily it happened.
How quickly something good can be interrupted by something ugly.
How close he stood.
How easily he thought he could erase her belonging here.
My hand finds hers without thinking.
This time, I don’t let go.
Chapter 15
Christina
We stay.
I don’t know who makes the decision first. Me, or Phil, or the simple fact that leaving immediately would feel like surrender. Emma brings me water I don’t remember asking for. Nick says something to Rob that makes him snort into his pint. Tommy watches the door without looking like he’s watching the door.
Everything continues.
Except it doesn’t.
Phil sits beside me, his leg pressed lightly against mine, his fingers linked with mine. His shoulders are tense in a way I recognise now, the quiet gathering of himself when something inside him has shifted out of alignment.
He doesn’t look at the bar.
He doesn’t look at the man.
He looks at me.
“Are you okay?” he asks quietly.
“Yes.”
The word comeseasily.
It’s also true.
Not untouched. Not unaffected. But intact.
He nods once, like he believes me.
We sit like that for another twenty minutes, maybe longer. Time stretches in places like this, bending around noise and alcohol and the stubborn refusal of ordinary life to stop.