She didn't take his hand.
Instead, she looked at it, then up into his waiting, storm-lit eyes. "If I take it," she said, her voice a low thrum in the quiet, "what does that mean? Is it a truce? A surrender? Or just another move?"
He didn't drop his hand. "It's a calibration," he answered, the word precise. "Like checking an instrument before a flight. We need to know where the needle sits. So we don't crash tomorrow."
It was such a perfect answer. Reducing the tempest between them to a matter of metrics and safe operation. Yet, it was the honesty that undid her. He wasn't pretending this was romance. It was a necessity.
Slowly, she lifted her own hand. She didn't place it in his. She turned it, so her fingertips hovered a hair's breadth above his palm. The space between their skin crac
