I held his gaze for a second longer, everything in me screaming to just say it, and then I did the thing I'd gotten so good at doing.
"No," I said. "There's nothing."
He didn't answer right away. He just looked at me, something working behind his eyes that I couldn't fully read, and for a second I thought he might push again, might not let it go this time the way he'd let it go every other time.
"Okay," he said finally.
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." He sat back, picking the laptop back up, though something in the set of his shoulders had changed, gone a little more careful, a little more guarded than it had been an hour ago. "I believe you."
I wasn't sure he did. I wasn't sure I would have, in his position, I'd have picked apart every single word of that "no," turned it over the way I turned
