The Sin Between Us

Chapter 15: Not Really Sure

Then, slowly, deliberately, he lifted his hand away.

"I've got it," I said.

My voice came out steadier than I expected, and some small, petty part of me was proud of that fact, given the circumstances.

"I know," he said, low, and something in the way he said it made it sound like he meant more than just the bag.

I got out. Climbed the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, mostly because I needed the extra minute to get my breathing under control. I stood in my hallway with my bag still slung over one shoulder and my heart doing something loud and thoroughly inconvenient in my chest.

My phone buzzed.

His name on the screen. I opened it.

“I'm still outside.”

I crossed to my window and looked down, and there it was… his car, parked at the curb, engine presumably still running, no lights moving, no sign of him actually leaving.

I typed “Jude.”

He replied

“I know. Give me a minute.”

I stood at that window a long time, watching his car the way you watch something you're not entirely sure is real, half expecting the door to open, half expecting it not to.

The street below was quiet… a couple walking a dog past the corner, someone's porch light flickering on a timer, the ordinary machinery of a Tuesday night carrying on completely unaware of what was happening four floors up.

I kept my eyes on his taillights the whole time, counting the minutes without meaning to, the same helpless counting I'd apparently made a habit of where he was concerned.

Eventually his lights came on and he pulled away from the curb, slow at first, then gone around the corner entirely.

I pressed my hand flat against the cold glass long after the car had disappeared, like I could still feel some trace of the warmth from the drive home lingering there, though of course I couldn't… the glass was freezing, had been the whole time, and I stood there with my palm against it anyway until my fingers went numb.

I didn't move from the window for a while after that. I thought about the exact weight of his hand over mine on that bag strap, how it hadn't felt like an accident, how nothing about him ever really did. I thought about the way he'd said “I know” twice in one conversation, once about the bag and once about still sitting outside my building for no reason either of us had bothered to name out loud, and how both times it had landed like an admission dressed up as a simple fact.

My phone buzzed again, an hour later, after I'd finally peeled myself away from the window and changed into something warmer, after I'd made tea I mostly forgot to drink.

“Made it home” the text read. “You okay?”

I stared at that for a second… the ordinariness of it, the way he'd circled back around to check on me after everything that had and hadn't happened in that car.

I typed back: “I'm fine. Are you?”

Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.

“Honestly? Not really sure.”

I read that twice, sitting on the edge of my bed with my knees pulled up, the mug of forgotten tea going cold on my nightstand. It was the first time he'd ever admitted to being anything other than completely sure of himself, and something about the honesty of it landed harder than almost anything he'd said out loud all night.

“What does that mean,” I typed.

“It means I keep almost saying something and then not saying it. I've been doing that for a while now, Hyacinth. Longer than you probably realize.”

My chest went tight in that same way it had earlier, in the car, with his arm resting on the console like it belonged there. I sat with the message for a long moment before I answered, choosing the words as carefully as I could manage with my hands not entirely steady.

“You can say it,”I finally typed.

“Whatever it is. I'm not going anywhere.”

The three dots appeared almost immediately this time, then vanished, then appeared again, longer this time, like he was writing and rewriting whatever came next. I sat there in the dark, phone lit up in my hands, waiting for whatever he'd finally decided to send.