Page 92 of Soft Flannel Hank

“Thank you,” Esther said in the darkness.

“For what,” he replied, kissing her neck, damp from her still-wet hair.

“For you. For everything. You’re a gift.”

Hank snorted skeptically.

Esther turned her head toward him. They’d turned off the lamp and she couldn’t see him in the darkness, but she knew he was listening. “You are, Hank. And I’m going to tell you every day until you believe it.”

He didn’t speak for a long time. So long that Esther thought he might have fallen asleep. But then he held her tighter and said, “Every day?”

“Every single day,” she replied, kissing his forearm.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

* * *

Hank registered a ticklingunder his nose and opened his eyes. He was in the cabin’s little bedroom. In the little double bed. With a face full of Esther’s hair.

He inhaled deeply, smelling her shampoo. Slowly, so as not to wake her, he lifted his hand and stroked her curls gently, feeling the course spirals against his palm. He smiled against the top of her head and pressed a soft kiss to her crown.

She shifted, and Hank froze. He hadn’t meant to wake her. In fact, he wanted nothing more than for her to stay asleep in his arms for a little while longer so he could smell her and feel her against him, so warm and solid and real that he couldn’t deny the truth of her being there. He couldn’t tell himself it was a dream because she wasright there.

But she pulled away from him a few inches. With daylight coming through the open bedroom door, he could make out her face. Her eyes squinted and her eyebrow was furrowed, making her look grumpy and young. He smiled again, completely in spite of himself. It was a foreign thing for his face, something he’d once done recklessly. Something he hadn’t done in a long time.

“Anyone ever tell you it’s creepy to watch people sleep, Dove?” Esther grumbled, tucking her face back into his chest.

“Is that so?” he asked, not recognizing the lightness in his voice.

“Mm-hmm,” she answered, her voice muffled by the cotton of his shirt. “But you can make it up to me if you go make coffee.”

“Tired?”

“Yeah. Some inconsiderate asshole kept me up half the night.”

“You poor thing,” he murmured, smiling against the top of her head.

“I know,” she grumbled. “The audacity.”

He kissed her forehead and Esther sighed, leaning into him and tightening her grip on his shirt. “I’ll try to make up for his behavior. Since you’re stuck with him and all.”

It was a joke, but beneath it rang the bitterness of his insecurity and doubt. Shewasstuck with him, after all. And maybe she didn’t want to be.

Esther pulled on his shirt and raised her head higher, kissing him firm on his lips. “You’restuck withme,” she said.

And just like that, that angry, terrified voice that he listened to entirely too often fell silent. He kissed her again and slid out of the bed. Esther grabbed the quilt and pulled it up to her nose, burrowing in.

He was just pouring the coffee into mugs when he heard Esther’s feet on the wood floorboards. She was wearing plaid flannel pajama pants and the black hoodie she’d been wearing the night he met her. She shuffled into the kitchen, yawning, with her hands stuffed into the pocket.

Hank got out a spoon and put it into a mug that he slid down the counter toward her, but she walked past it and straight into his chest. Her hands stayed in her hoodie pocket, but she leaned her whole weight into him, and he found his arms instinctively coming around her to hold her there.

Esther kissed his sternum, over his T-shirt, and then pulled away to doctor her coffee. Hank plucked to spoon out of her mug and put it in his mouth, dragging his tongue against the warm steel as he pulled it out, tasting coffee and cream and sugar and Esther. She smiled.

“Is the coffee okay?”

“Of course. You’re the best.”