He’s closer than I realized, his silhouette framed by the warm glow of the kitchen light, while behind him, the storm screams, rain slashing past the open door in heavy, silver sheets.
I feel raw. I’m tired and cracked open, vibrating with a gratitude that is tangled up in a longing I don't have a name for.
It’s a magnetic pull, a sudden, desperate need to be anchored. Without thinking, I rise up on my toes and press my lips to his.
For a heartbeat, he lets me.
His hand comes up to cradle my jaw—his palm is warm, his touch impossibly careful.
That single second of contact is so electric it nearly knocks the breath from my lungs.
It’s the first thing I’ve wanted for myself in longer than I can remember.
The first piece of this wrecked, miserable day that actually belongs to me. I lean into him, my heart hammering against my ribs, tasting the salt and the rain.
And then, he draws back.
He does it gently, so gently it doesn't feel like a rejection.
He keeps his hand anchored to my face, resting his forehead against mine for the space of a single, shaky breath.
When he speaks, his voice has dropped an octave, sounding rough and strained.
"Not like this," he murmurs. His thumb brushes once, slowly, along my cheekbone. "Not tonight. Not when you've been crying and had a rough day."
I freeze, waiting for the shame to arrive. I expect the old, reliable shame. The kind I was raised on, the kind that tells me I'm too much or not enough.
But it doesn't come.
Because he isn't pushing me away. He’s holding me in the dim light with the storm raging at our backs, telling me through his restraint that I’m worth more than a momentary impulse.
He refuses to take something from a woman who turned up shattered on his porch.
In my entire, sheltered life, nobody has ever wanted me enough to not take.
"Okay," I whisper, my voice trembling.
He steps back, creating a sliver of space between us, and reaches past me to flip on the porch light.
"Let me walk you home," he says. "Storm's not letting up."
"It's twenty feet."
"Then it'll take me twenty seconds." He pulls a rain jacket off a hook by the door and holds it out, and the way he holds it leaves no room to argue.
I take the jacket.
He walks me across the dark stretch between our houses with one hand hovering at the small of my back, not touching, just there.
A presence between me and the rain, and he waits on my porch while I get the door open and Hoagie comes barreling out to greet us both like we've been gone a year.
"Lock it behind you," he says.
"I will."
"Sophie." He waits until I look at him. "I meant what I said. I'll make those calls. You're not by yourself in this."
Then he's gone back into the dark, and I throw the deadbolt the way my mother would want.