Twenty minutes past our scheduled time, and the chair across from me remains empty.
I sit in my office with my notes spread across the desk, my pen tapping an anxious rhythm against wood, my eyes fixed on the door like it might conjure him through sheer force of will.
The clock on the wall mocks me with each advancing second. Twenty-one minutes. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.
I check my phone. No messages, no excuses, no explanation for why Kai Becker, who has never missed a session since I started tutoring him, has chosen today to disappear.
"Congratulations, Skye," I mutter to the empty room. "You've finally found a way to make a man run that doesn't involve revealing your credit score."
The absence feels like punishment for the morning, for the car, for my refusal to change my California plans.
I replay our conversation with masochistic skill—the way his expression closed, the way he told me to get out, the way he drove away before I reached the sidewalk.
‘You made your choice. You keep making it, over and over, and I won't pretend it doesn't matter.’
Twenty-five minutes. My hands begin to shake as I gather my things, shoving papers into my bag with more force than necessary.
"Very dignified," I tell myself, watching a stack of unmarked essays scatter across the floor. "The picture of a woman who has her life together. Someone should put you on a motivational poster."
The bus ride home stretches interminably, every stop an opportunity to replay my failures, to catalogue the ways I have driven away the only person who came looking for me after that goddamn dinner.
"Excellent work today, Skye," I mutter against the smudged window, watching strip malls blur past. "Really stellar performance. You've managed to turn 'emotionally unavailable' into an Olympic sport. Gold medal material."
An elderly woman in a floral cardigan turns from the seat ahead, her reading glasses magnifying the judgment in her eyes. She clutches her purse tighter against her chest, as if heartbreak might be contagious.
"Just rehearsing for a play," I offer with a smile that feels more like a grimace. "Community theater. Very tragic. Greek, actually."
She turns back around without a word, and I press my forehead against the cool glass, wondering when exactly I became the kind of person who talks to herself on public transportation and lies about it to strangers.
The house is quiet when I enter. Heinrich at work, Diane presumably at another garden club or wine lunch, the staff invisible in their efficiency.
I climb the stairs slowly, already planning how to survive another night of silence through walls I pressed my ear against, hoping to hear evidence that he existed, that whatever burned between us had not been entirely extinguished by my cowardice.
A soft thud comes from my bedroom. Then the unmistakable creak of the reading chair—the ancient wingback that protests under any weight, that I've been meaning to oil for weeks.
I push the door open and find Kai sitting in my reading chair—the one by the window where I drink tea, trying to forget him.
His legs stretch out, casual as ownership. The interior door stands open behind him, the path between our rooms finally, fully clear.
"You removed the dresser," he says, not looking up from the book in his hands. One of mine—Hannah Armstrong, the romance I was reading the night when the sounds through the wall drove me to the bathroom. "Permanently, it seems. I wasn't sure if that was an invitation or surrender."
"It's neither." I drop my bag in the doorway, uncertain whether to advance or retreat. "You missed tutoring."
"I know." He turns a page slowly, his eyes still fixed on some words.
"Without explanation," I press.
"I know that too." He closes the book and sets it aside on the windowsill, finally meeting my eyes. "I was angry. I thought I'd give you what you want—distance, separation, no complications to your California plans."
"And now?" I fold my arms across my chest, aware that the gesture is defensive, unable to stop myself from making it.
"Now I'm curious why you removed the furniture." He stands, moving toward me with the controlled grace that makes my pulse accelerate. "What changed?"
I should lie. Should maintain the fortress I have constructed from ambition and escape routes.
But his presence in my room—uninvited, undeniable—dissolves resistance in my chest like sugar in water.
"I was looking for you," I admit, and the words come out scraped from a place I have been protecting since Travis. "Last night, I came through the door to apologize, and you were gone."
His expression shifts, surprise breaking through his controlled facade. The mask slips for just a moment, revealing vulnerability beneath that I have never seen before.
"I didn't find you, so I assumed—" I stop, swallow around the tightness in my throat, force myself to continue. "I assumed you'd sought comfort somewhere else."
"And instead of asking, you moved furniture and constructed narratives." He steps closer, close enough that I smell the day on him—soap, coffee, anger. "You assumed the worst of me again."
"Kai, that's not—"
"Say it." His voice drops, intimate and demanding, the command slicing through my protests before they can fully form. "Admit you were jealous. Admit you pictured me with someone and it made you want to scream. Admit that your precious California plan doesn't account for what you feel when you think of me touching someone else."
The words strike precisely, finding the wound I have been protecting since that night when the sounds through the wall drove me to touch myself in a locked bathroom.
I picture it again—him and Petra, the screaming that carried through plaster and distance, his expertise directed elsewhere—and feel the jealousy surge fresh and violent, undeniable now that he has named it.
"Yes," I breathe, and the admission costs me pride I did not know I still possessed. "I was jealous. I am jealous. Is that what you want to hear? That you've infected me with a longing I didn't want and can't cure?"
"Infected." He laughs, short and humorless, the sound landing somewhere between appreciation and accusation. "That's one word for it."
"Leave." The command comes weak, unconvincing even to my own ears. "You shouldn't be here. We shouldn't—"
"No." He does not move, does not retreat, his presence filling the space I have failed to defend. "I've spent weeks leaving you to your plans and your panic and your cruelty. I'm done leaving, Skye. You want me gone, you'll have to make me go."
I stare at him—at the stubborn set of his jaw, the challenge burning in his dark eyes, the certainty in his posture that says he will not be the one to break first—and understand that the fortress is breached.
That I have been wanting him to breach it. That survival and surrender have become indistinguishable in the space between his body and mine.
"I don't know how to do this," I whisper, and my voice cracks on the confession like glass under pressure. "I don't know how to want an impossible thing and not destroy it. Every time I reach for happiness, I break it."
"Then learn." He closes the final distance, his hand finding my cheek. His thumb presses against the bone as if memorizing my structure. "I'm not asking for forever, Skye. I'm asking for now."
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