Page 107 of Returned Mail

Then his shoulders drop, some of the tension bleeding out. “Refurbished, rearranged, and reassigned.” He says. “Retired from being blown up. Great. A whole new life full of r’s.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a new life,” I say.

His eyes flicker. “You say that like you’ve done it.”

“I’m currently living in a stranger’s old apartment, which I subleased from his ex, for two years, just because my boyfriend of six years cheated on me, broke my heart, and technically forced me to leave my apartment behind. Oh, and I flew across the world to sit in a hospital room, to then move to a rehab facility to take care of a stranger I met through letters,” I say. “How much more new life do you want?”

He huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “Fair point.”

We sit in silence after that.

Today is the day that they will discharge him from the rehab facility.

He’s not healed, not completely, but well enough to leave. To transition, and to start whatever this new life is supposed to be. The nurse goes over his medication schedule with me, not him. Hands me a folder with aftercare instructions. Gives me that look again, the one halfway between concern and curiosity.

“Does he have somewhere to go?” she asks quietly while he’s in the bathroom.

The question lodges in my throat. His parents are gone; I know that from one of his letters. His dad disappeared on him when he was still a kid, and his mom died a couple of years ago. That’s why he doesn’t have a real emergency contact, well, except for Monica for a while. Now, he just has…well… me.

“Yeah,” I say now, heart pounding. “He does.”

When we’re in the cab on the way to the airport, he stares out the window, one hand pressed unconsciously to his side. “What happens now?” he asks.

I swallow. “You come home,” I say.

He glances at me. “To what home? Where?”

I hesitate only a second. “To the apartment,” I say. “To… my apartment. Yours. Ours?” The word slips out before I can stop it.

Ours.

He stiffens slightly. I rush on, cheeks burning. “I mean—just until you figure things out. It’s familiar. It has space. And it fixes the ‘where are you going’ problem. Unless you already have somewhere else in mind, I just thought⁠—”

“Mia.”

I shut up.

He’s watching me with this soft look, like he is stunned. “You’d want me there?” he asks slowly. “With you? Every day?”

My throat feels too tight. “Yes,” I say. “I would.”

He looks back out the window. For a moment, I think I pushed too far. Stepped over a line we never defined. Then he says quietly, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. I’ll come… home.”

My chest floods with warmth and terror. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? Not just logistics. Not just convenience. I just invited the man I’m quietly, desperately falling for to live with me. In his old life, but our new one. We’ll be under the same roof. Breathing the same air. Carrying all this tension with nowhere else to go.

God help me.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Mia

The first time he walks back into the loft, it's slower than I imagined.

We take the elevator up. One of the bags is over his shoulder, even though he’s not supposed to lift heavy things, because he refuses to let me carry everything, his hand braced on a cane the doctors gave him for ‘temporary support’.