Vows that binds, Truth that breaks .

Chapter 4: collision

She saw him again three days later, and told herself she wasn't looking for him.

It was a lie, technically, though a small one — the kind you tell yourself so easily it barely counts. Maya had noticed his chair from the far end of the corridor, near the family waiting area, and some petty, still-stinging part of her had considered turning her cart around and starting on a different floor. She didn't. She had a schedule to keep, and rearranging her whole route to avoid one rude man in a nice suit felt like giving him more power over her afternoon than he deserved.

He was alone this time. No mother, no driver hovering by the elevator — just him, parked near the window with a tablet in his lap that he wasn't actually looking at, his attention somewhere much further away.

Maya kept her head down and got to work on the nearest set of chairs, wiping armrests with the brisk efficiency of someone who'd rather this take four minutes than six.

"You're avoiding my side of the room."

She hadn't expected him to speak first. She glanced up. He wasn't looking at her, exactly — still doing that thing where his eyes stayed somewhere in the middle distance, like meeting hers directly cost him something he wasn't willing to pay.

"I'm working my way around the room," Maya said. "In order. Like a normal person."

"You skipped this row."

"I was saving the best for last."

That got something out of him — not quite a laugh, but a small, surprised exhale that might have been the start of one, quickly suppressed, like he wasn't in the habit of allowing himself that kind of reaction and had caught it a beat too late.

"I owe you an apology," he said, and it sounded like it cost him more than the almost-laugh had. "The other day. I was — that wasn't about you."

Maya paused, rag still in hand, and studied him for a moment longer than was strictly professional. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'm not going to pretend I need a whole explanation. You were rude, you're apologizing, I accept it. We don't have to make a production out of it."

"Most people make a production out of everything around me," Wilson said, and there was an edge to it — not aimed at her, she realized, but at something older, something worn smooth by repetition. "It's refreshing, honestly. Being talked to like a person who can just be annoying sometimes, instead of a — " He stopped himself.

"Instead of a what?"

He looked at her properly then, for the first time since she'd walked in — really looked, the way people rarely did with hospital cleaners, like she was a person mid-thought and not part of the furniture. "Doesn't matter."

"You brought it up."

"And now I'm un-bringing it up." But there was something almost warm in the way he said it, a dry humor she hadn't expected from him at all. "You're very persistent for someone who claims to have eleven rooms to clean."

"Ten, actually. I did one while you were being cryptic." She resumed wiping down the chair beside him, close enough now that the conversation had stopped being shouted across a room and started being something quieter, more contained. "For what it's worth — you don't have to explain yourself to me. I'm not going to ask you what happened, or look at you like you're made of glass, or any of the other things I'm guessing people do."

"You don't know what people do."

"I know what people do to my grandma when they find out her heart's bad. Suddenly everyone's whispering, treating her like she might shatter if you speak too loud. She hates it. Says it makes her feel like she's already dying, when actually she's just old and stubborn and would like to be talked to like a normal person, thank you very much."

Something flickered across his face — surprise, maybe, or the particular kind of recognition that comes from hearing your own experience described by someone who has no idea they're describing it.

"She sounds like good company," he said, quieter now.

"She's the best company I know." Maya straightened, gathering her supplies, aware suddenly of how long she'd been standing in one spot talking instead of working. "I should get back to it."

"Right. Of course." He turned his attention back to the tablet, though she suspected, watching him for half a second longer than necessary, that he wasn't really seeing whatever was on the screen.

"For what it's worth," Maya added, already moving toward the door, "you're not as bad as the first impression."

"High praise".

"Don't get used to it."

She left before she could see whether he smiled, and told herself, again, not particularly convincingly, that she hadn't been hoping he would .