But I also thought: I came back.
"Make enough for two," I said.
The thing that moved across his face was not relief -- it was more specific than that, more careful. The expression of a man who had handed something fragile to someone else and watched them decide what to do with it.
He turned back to the stove.
I poured two glasses of water and set one on his side of the counter.
Outside, the city continued its ancient and indifferent business.
Between them, something had cracked open and been looked at directly and had not, in the end, been the kind of thing that couldn't be survived.
I was beginning to understand that this was what trust actually was -- not the absence of rupture, but the decision, after the rupture, to remain.
Chapter 27: Three Days After
Three days after the folder.
I counted them because I was the kind of person who counted things, and because the three days had a texture I wanted to be accurate about, not dramatic, not cold, but careful. The particular carefulness of two people who had broken something and were being precise about how they moved around the pieces.
He cooked. I worked. They ate across from each other and talked about the case. I finished the Moreau Holdings report. They talked about Tran's update. They did not talk about the folder.
On the third night, I couldn't sleep.
* * *
I had a system for insomnia, developed over years of living in my own head: get up, make tea, sit by whatever window had the best light. Let the mind do what it was going to do rather than fighting it back toward sleep. I had used it in seven cities.
I padded to the kitchen at two in the morning.
Dominic was already there.
Standing at the counter with a glass of water, not looking at anything in particular, the way people stood in kitchens at two in the morning when sleep had failed them. He was wearing a dark t-shirt and the absence of the suit was something I had neverfully adjusted to, the reminder that he was a person with a body inside the controlled exterior, not an architecture.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
The city light came through the windows, warm and slightly orange, the particular nighttime illumination of New Orleans. In it, I could see the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders and the way he was holding himself with the specific quality I'd come to recognize as careful, not controlled, which was the version he presented to rooms full of people, but careful, which was the version he was with me.
"Couldn't sleep," I said.
"No."
I moved to put the kettle on. He stayed where he was, giving my room, which he always did.
"I've been thinking," I said.
"About."
I set the kettle on the burner. Turned to face him fully.
"About the fact that I came back," I said. "I want you to understand that I know what I did there. Not forgiveness, I haven't finished with being angry about the withholding. But I understand what you were carrying. I know something about carrying things."
"You do," he said quietly.
"And I've been maintaining a distance between us that has served its purpose." I looked at him steadily. "I don't think I want to maintain it anymore."