Page 137 of The Clinch
LIZ
Yes
Waiting for you
33
HEAT IN THE ROPES (LEO)
By the time I get back to Williamsburg, the exhaustion has settled where it always does after the second slot—deep in the joints, under the skin, behind the eyes where thought starts to drag.
I showered at the gym. It never really takes.
Camp leaves a residue. Salt. Fatigue. Impact. The feeling of a body worked hard enough that it stops feeling fully yours.
The apartment door unlocks under my thumb.
The first thing that hits me is food. Garlic. Roasted potatoes. Something green. Still clean enough for camp, just made by someone who cares whether I enjoy it.
The second thing is her.
Liz is barefoot in my kitchen in one of my T-shirts and tiny sleep shorts, hair down over her shoulders, wooden spoon in one hand. My shirt hangs off her like it’s still deciding whether it was borrowed or claimed.
I just stand there and look.
Then she glances over her shoulder. I see the relief before the smile catches up.
She takes me in before she means to—disheveled hair, fresh shirt, the drag in my posture, the stiffness in my ribs when I shut the door, the bruise high on my cheekbone.
The smile fades.
“Jesus,” she says softly. “Leo.”
“I’m fine.”
She gives me a look that says she’d have to work very hard to make that lie respectable.
“Mm-hm.” She turns the burner down and sets the spoon aside. “Sit.”
I don’t move.
She crosses the kitchen in three steps, and the intimacy of it hits harder than it should—watching someone come toward you like they already know what shape your pain takes.
Up close, she smells like my soap and coffee and something light that is just her.
Her fingertips graze the bruise on my cheekbone, then slide along my jaw, feather light.
I make myself hold where I am.
“Did anyone even look at this?” she murmurs.
I almost laugh. “What’s your verdict, Doc?”
Her mouth twitches. Then she takes my wrist. “Sit down before you fall down and pretend it was on purpose.”
I let her pull me onto one of the stools.
She stands between my knees, looking down at me with that focused nurse face that has nothing soft in it except the fact that it’s turned on me.
