Page 229 of Wild Card 13

My eyes lifted.

Color moved into her face, faint and uneven. “You asked. I answered.”

“I know.” My voice almost broke on it. “That matters to me.”

Her hand stilled on Dottie’s head.

“So I’m going to keep doing that,” I said. “Asking. Waiting. Hearing the answer. If you say stop, I stop. If you say no, it’s no. If you say you need space, you get space.”

Lucy’s brows pulled together slightly.

I kept going before courage could leak out of me. “No pressure. No ambushing you. No trying to corner you into a conversation because I’m spiraling and I want relief. No asking you to decide before you’re ready.”

Her eyes searched mine.

“And at work,” I said, “I follow your lead.”

One eyebrow lifted a fraction. There she was, even wrecked. “At work.”

“Professionally,” I clarified, because apparently I still had some survival instinct. “No Shortcake at work. No flirting at work.”

Her eyebrow rose higher.

I winced. “Okay. No intentional flirting at work.”

“Ty.”

“I’m being honest.” I held up one hand. “I can promise no Shortcake. I can promise no corners, no ambushes, no making your job harder on purpose. I can promise I will try very hard not to look at you like an idiot when you do that thing where you push your glasses up and destroy my life.”

A shocked little laugh escaped her. Tiny. Frayed at the edges. Beautiful enough to make the room tilt.

I let myself smile for half a second, then sobered because thiswas not a place to charm my way through. “But if I slip, you call me on it. You tell me to knock it off, and I do.”

Lucy looked down, her mouth pressed tight like she did not know what to do with the laugh now that it had betrayed her.

“You can add rules,” I said. “Tomorrow. Next week. Six months from now. Whenever. I’ll follow them.”

She looked back up at me. “You don’t get points for basic decency.”

“I know.” I breathed in through my nose. “This isn’t me trying to get points.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s me trying to learn how to show up without asking you to trust me first,” I explained in a rapid-fire rush. “Words aren’t enough,” I continued. “They weren’t enough then. They’re not enough now. I can explain. I can apologize. I can tell you I regret that morning more than anything I’ve ever done. All of that is true.” My throat tightened. “But the thing that broke us was me not acting when it mattered. So the only way I know how to ask for trust is to prove I know how to stay present now.”

The fire behind me gave a low crackle. Outside, snow skittered against the window, lifted by wind off the roofline. The lake remained dark beyond the glass, wide and frozen and silent.

“I’m not asking for an answer tonight,” I said. “I’m not asking you to stay. I’m not asking you to forgive me because I finally stopped being a coward out loud. I’m not asking you to pretend one kiss fixed something I spent eight years not fixing.”

Her hand curled gently into Dottie’s fur.

“I want to,” I admitted.

Lucy’s breath caught.

I looked at her because she deserved the truth, even when the truth made me less impressive. Especially then. “I want to ask. I want to ask for everything. I want to ask you to stay here tonight. I want to kiss you again. I want to take back every mile Betsy drove away from your house and every call you didn’t answer and every day I let you think I had chosen someone else over you.” My voice went rough. “I want things I don’t have the right to want yet.”

Lucy’s face crumpled softly. She closed her eyes.