CHAPTER 20
1053 Words
Reina's POV
We stayed for an hour and a half. My mother drifted in and out, present and warm for stretches, then quieter, retreating somewhere internal that I'd learned not to chase her into. During the clearer moments she asked about Marco, about my ward, about whether I was sleeping enough. The usual inventory she'd always kept of me, running on whatever was left of the circuitry that made her.
Damian sat through all of it without performing comfort or discomfort. He answered when she addressed him, directly, simply, no condescension in his tone. At one point she asked him what he did and he said he ran a company and she asked if he was good at it and he said he was working on being better and she nodded like that was the correct answer.
She fell asleep in her chair near the end. Gradual and peaceful, mid-sentence, the way she did now.
We left quietly.
The corridor felt different after the room. Louder without being loud. I walked with my coat in my hands and didn't talk and Damian didn't push me to. He matched my pace and gave me the silence I needed and I was so specifically grateful for that I didn't know what to do with it.
Outside the air was cold and I put my coat on and stood on the pavement for a moment.
"She called you important," he said quietly. Not pressing it. Just acknowledging.
"She says things clearly on good days." I looked down the street. "She always could."
"You didn't correct it."
"It wasn't incorrect."
I felt him go still beside me. That particular quality of stillness that meant something had landed and he was letting it settle.
I started walking. He fell into step.
We found a coffee place two blocks from the facility, small, warm, the kind of place with mismatched chairs and no aesthetic agenda. We sat by the window. The server brought two cups without our orders which meant she'd guessed and guessed right, which felt like the universe being briefly cooperative.
"Ask me what you're thinking," I said.
"You'll tell me when you're ready."
"I'm ready now. I'm just waiting for you to ask."
He looked at me across the small table. "What was it like? The first time you came here alone."
I wrapped both hands around my cup. "Terrible," I said. "She had a bad day. She didn't know me at all, not even partially knowing. I sat with her for an hour and she kept asking who I was and I kept saying her daughter and she kept looking at me like I was making something up." I paused. "I cried in the subway on the way home. Which I hadn't done in years."
"How long ago was that?"
"Eight months in. So about three and a half years ago."
"And you kept coming every Tuesday."
"Of course."
"Without fail," he said.
"Without fail."
He was quiet for a moment. Not the silence of someone searching for words, the silence of someone who understood and was sitting inside it honestly.
"She knew you today," he said.
"Yes." I looked at my cup. "I used to measure the visits by whether she knew me. I don't anymore. It made the bad days feel like failure and they're not failures. They're just the condition." I paused. "Now I measure by whether she seemed okay. Whether the people here are caring for her well. Whether she seemed at peace."
"And today?"
"Today was a good day," I said. And felt the full weight of what that meant, that a good day was my mother knowing my name and holding my hand and telling a man she'd met once that I mattered.
Damian looked at me steadily. "She said you don't let people look."
"She did."
"She was right, wasn't she."
I met his eyes. "Yes."
"But you let me."
Not a question. I answered it anyway. "You didn't ask permission. You just, paid attention. And by the time I noticed I'd already let you in further than I meant to."
Something moved through his expression. Deep and quiet. "Is that alright?"
"I'm still deciding," I said. "But I haven't asked you to stop. That's something."
He almost smiled. "It's a lot from you."
"It's everything from me," I said. Plainly, because he deserved accuracy. "I don't do this. Any of this. Tuesday, the green dress, dinner, the…." I stopped. "None of this is normal for me."
"I know."
"I need you to actually know that," I said. "Not as a compliment. As information. I will mess this up. I will go quiet when I should talk and I will push when things feel close and I will convince myself it's sensible to create distance because distance is what I know."
"Okay," he said.
"That's not an okay situation. That's a warning."
"I know what it is," he said. "I'm telling you it doesn't change anything." He leaned forward slightly. "I will chase you. Not in a way that doesn't respect you — but I will notice when you're retreating and I will show up regardless. That's also information."
My chest was loud and full.
"You're sure about that," I said.
"I've been sure since you handed me divorce papers in your pajamas and asked me to leave because you had a morning shift." He held my gaze. "I didn't know what to call it then. I do now."
"What do you call it?"
He looked at me the way he had in the hospital corridor, in the empty building, across every table we'd shared, with that full, unhurried attention that made me feel like the most legible person in any room.
"The clearest thing in my life," he said. "By a significant margin."
The coffee was warm in my hands and the window was cold beside us and I looked at him and felt something I'd spent years training myself not to feel, the specific terrifying relief of being known.
"Okay," I said softly.
"Okay?"
"Don't make me say it twice."
He didn't smile. He just looked at me with something steady and certain and completely real.
His hand was on the table. I put mine over it.
We stayed like that until the coffee was gone.
- Writer
