Page 60 of Priest

Thoughtful.

The lies sit thin and brittle in my chest because the truth is uglier. I couldn’t stand not knowing how mad she was. Couldn’t stand the silence. Couldn’t stand the idea of her coming home to an empty place after a brutal shift, carrying our baby under her ribs, and deciding that empty felt better than anything I could offer her.

My instinct has never been soft. It comes out wrong more often than it comes out right, all muscle and command when it should be patience. But the second I saw her pregnant, something in me locked into place so hard it rattled bone. Take care of her. Feed her. Protect her. Put something warm in front of her and make sure she rests, even if she curses me the whole way through it.

And she will.

God, she’s going to be pissed.

Part of me knows I deserve it.

Another part, the dumbest part of me, the part that has always liked her fire too much for my own good, wants to see it anyway. Blue mad is a force of nature. All that polish burns off, and what’s left is sharp, honest, alive. She looks at me then like I’m not too big to challenge, not too dangerous to tear into, not too broken to expect better from.

That should’ve been my sign to turn around.

Instead, I lock the door behind me.

Her apartment smells like her, clean linen, citrus, and the faint trace of hospital antiseptic she never quite shakes after a shift. There are shoes by the door and a cardigan tossed over the back of the couch, small evidence of a life that existed just fine before me and might continue that way after.

The thought lands mean.

I head for the kitchen, needing something to do with my hands besides tear myself apart over all the ways I’ve already fucked this up. The grocery bags go on her counter, and I unpack what I bought on the way over, apparently smart enough to plan dinner but not smart enough to knock like a normal man. I hang my cut carefully over the back of a dining chair, like I belong here. Like this isn’t trespassing dressed up as a grand gesture. Then I roll up my sleeves and get to work. Roast. Potatoes. Carrots. Fresh bread. Simple, solid comfort food. The kind a man makes when he doesn’t trust his mouth not to ruin everything the second it opens. While the oven warms, doubt creeps in hard and fast, but I still move through the apartment like I can fix a cracked foundation with dinner and hot water.

I decide to run a bath for her too.

Because she’s been on her feet all day. Because she’s pregnant. Because she deserves to come home to something other than exhaustion. Because my brain, apparently, has decided that breaking into a woman’s apartment is less insane if the tub is warm when she gets there.

She’s going to be furious.

And she has every damn right.

I picture her face when she walks in, that dangerous calm she gets before the storm hits, the way her eyes sharpen like she’s about to cut something out of her life clean and precise. I tell myself she’ll see the effort.

I also picture her throwing something at my head.

The lock turns while I’m basting the roast.

Every instinct I have flares. Old training. Old habits. I force myself to stay put because if I come around that corner too fast, I’ll scare her, and the idea of putting fear in her chest in her own damn home makes me want to rip the skin off my bones.

Let her see me.

Let her yell.

I deserve it.

The door opens, and for half a second, I hear the fear before I see it. Her breathing changes. The apartment goes still around the pause where she’s assessing the room, weighing threat and distance and whatever she can reach with her hand. It hits me harder than any punch ever could.

Then she sees my cut.

The fear vanishes.

The rage doesn’t.

“Oh no,” she says, low and tight. “Oh no, you did not.”

She bends, grabs a small vase off the entry table, rounds the corner, and throws it.

“You broke into my apartment?”