Page 256 of Wild Card 13

Freya paused in my doorway. “That sounded almost like concern.”

“It was observation.”

“Mm-hmm.” She stepped in long enough to steal one of the wrapped mints from the little dish on my shelf, which I had bought for visitors and apparently stocked only for Freya. “I’m making a house call to Grandma Ruth.”

I looked up fully. “How is she doing?”

Freya’s mouth curved. “Stubborn as hell but healing faster than most of the athletes on the roster.”

Relief moved through me before I could organize it into something less revealing. “Good,” I said, turning back to the schedule on my screen.

“Very casual,” Freya teased.

“I am allowed to ask about an injured person.”

“You are. I am allowed to notice when you know which injured person I mean before I use her last name.”

I gave her a look. She smiled with all her teeth. Dottie lifted her head from her bed, decided Freya had no whipped cream, and went back to sleep.

“Ty checks on her every morning?” I asked, because apparently my mouth had decided we were no longer maintaining basic defenses.

Freya leaned one shoulder against the bookshelf. “Breakfast in the morning, from what I hear. He brings food, she complains about being supervised, Hal pretends not to enjoy the extra company. Very Burns family. Much starch.”

I pictured it too easily. Ty in the old kitchen, moving around with that restless competence he had when care needed somewhere to go. Ruth giving orders from a chair. Hal reading his newspaper like a man hiding amusement behind national events.

My chest warmed. That was the part I did not know how to fight.

Wanting him was one thing. My body had been betraying me on that front since he walked back into my life with the same blue eyes and a better understanding of silence.

But knowing him like this, seeing the structure of the man beneath the charm, was harder to defend against.

Freya unwrapped her mint. “You made a face.”

“I did not.”

“You did. It was soft and panicked. Very you.”

“I regret allowing you into my office.”

“You didn’t. Bea did, emotionally, months ago.” She popped the mint into her mouth and studied me. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Try again.”

I exhaled through my nose and leaned back in my chair. The lamp cast warm light across the desk even though the morning was gray. Rain threaded down the window. My coffee sat near my keyboard, half-finished and still warm.

I could have lied better.

I was tired of lying well.

“I think I keep waiting for him to get tired,” I sighed.

Freya’s face softened, but not with pity. Freya did not do pity. She did presence, which was both kinder and more difficult to escape. “Of showing up?” she asked.

I nodded once.

The words had been sitting in me for weeks, gathering weight one quiet morning at a time. I had not wanted to give them shape because shape made them real.