"I know." I step back but I don't go far. "I know."
He looks at me. His face is doing the thing it's been doing all night, open in a way that costs him something, not performing for me but actually showing me. "I haven't kissed anyone since you," he says. "I want you to know that. Not in ten years. I didn't want to."
"Austin."
"I'm not saying it to pressure you. I'm saying it because it's true and I think you should know the truth about me."
I look at him for a moment.
"Even EJ's mother?"
"Especially her." His jaw tightens briefly. "She was never mine. She was a mistake that became a miracle. A miracle that is completely mine."
Something turns over in my chest.
"Does it bother you?" he asks quietly. "That I have EJ? What we were supposed to do together."
I take a breath. "I don't know yet. Honestly. It's a lot to hold." I look at him. "But EJ isn’t something I'm going to be able to not love, so."
He looks at me like I've said something significant.
"I need you to go," I say, before either of us says anything else. "Rest. Let those stitches settle."
"Okay." He gets down from the table, careful on the leg, and he reaches for his jeans. While he's pulling them on, I write up my notes and I keep my face doing the thing it does in clinical settings, calm and professional, and I mostly succeed.
He comes to me at the door and he cups my face in both hands and kisses me again. Just briefly. Just enough.
"Thank you," he says. "For patching me up. And for the other thing."
"Don't get shot again."
"I'll do my best."
He walks out of my office, and I follow him to the door. I watch him get on his bike and I watch him ride away. When he's gone, I stand in the dark doorway for a while before I go back inside and lock up.
My hands are still not entirely steady.
That is what Austin does for me. He’s always been able to make me feel like that, out of control.
CHAPTER 13
Austin
She said to bring coffee from Ruby's. Ruby doesn't open until nine on a Sunday. I'm at her door at eight thirty with coffee from the machine at the garage and a bag of pastries that I sweet-talked out of Ruby's kitchen door by telling her who they were for. Ruby wouldn’t give me coffee, but she gave me pastries and advice. “You’d better not mess this up, son.”
I knock and wait. I hear Savannah coming and I feel like my whole body is vibrating from the buzz of being so close to her. When she opens the door, she's in her pajamas, the little shorts and vest she had on yesterday. She’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen as she squints at me in the morning light.
"You're early again, especially after keeping me awake for half of the night."
"Ruby's doesn't open until nine. I improvised."
She looks at the coffee and then at me before she steps aside. I go up the stairs and into the kitchen ahead of her this time and put the pastries on the table. She comes in and puts two plates down without being asked, and there it is again. The easy way wealways moved around each other, like muscle memory, like we never stopped.
We sit and eat, drinking the coffee. Savannah moans when she bites into the pastry and that sound goes straight to places, I'd rather not think about at eight thirty in the morning. She sees my face and she raises an eyebrow.
"I love that sound coming from you," I say. "I wish I was making you moan like that."
"Austin. It's too soon for that. I don't even know what we are yet."