Page 117 of The Grumpy Defenseman
Her fingers were cool. Mine closed around them carefully.
“I want this,” she said.
The words were quiet.
They still changed the air in the truck.
“I want you,” she said. “I want the life where you show up and tell me where you went. I want the version where I don’t have to make myself smaller to be safe.”
My thumb moved once over her knuckles.
“Don’t.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“Good.”
She breathed out.
“I don’t know how to do all of it.”
“Me neither.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It is honest.”
She looked at me for a long second.
Then she nodded.
“Okay.”
That word again.
Small. Plain. Not easy.
The first time she had given it to me, I had not known what to do withit. Now I knew better. It was not permission to relax. It was permission to keep showing up.
I lifted her hand and pressed my mouth to her knuckles.
She went still in a way that told me she felt it everywhere.
Good.
I wanted her to.
We sat there with the city in front of us and the night around the truck.
“Bella is going to lose her mind,” she said after a while.
The shift was so sudden I almost laughed.
“Should I be worried?”
“Yes. She is going to take credit for this.”
“Does she deserve it?”
