Chapter 6: The Kitchen

I said it again the next night, and I meant it, and I was so angry with myself that I did it standing at his sink.

It was eleven.

I had a shift at midnight, and I had come down in my scrubs for the thermos Enid had left on the counter, and he was washing a mug.

He washed mugs by hand, slowly, the way he did everything.

He heard me in the doorway, and his hands stopped under the water.

"Maeve."

It was the first time he had said my name.

I stood there with the whole kitchen between us.

"I said I'd tell you tomorrow," I said.

"You did."

"I meant it."

He turned off the tap.

He did not turn around, and I saw that he was waiting, with his shoulders braced and his two hands set on the edge of the steel sink.

I crossed the floor and stopped one step behind him.

"Turn around," I said.

He turned.

He was a foot taller than me, and he stood with his back to the sink and his hands gripping the counter on either side.

His shirt was wet at the cuffs, and his eyes were on the floor between our feet.

"Look at me," I said.

His gaze came up.

It took a long time, like a man lifting something heavy.

Gray eyes, close, and rimmed red from no sleep, and dark with a thing I had not seen in any man who looked at me in nine years of pharmacy windows.

He was looking at me as though he had been waiting a week to do it and was afraid I'd vanish.

I put my hand on his chest.