Before I could properly react by kissing him back or even putting my hands on his waist, he pulled back, his cheeks flushed and his eyes cast down toward the cracked and slightly stained linoleum floor.
“I—” He licked his lips, those lips that had just been on mine. “I’m sorry.”
I opened my mouth to tell him he didn’t have to be sorry, but then he kept talking.
“I know I said I wasn’t ready, and I’m not. I don’t think you can everbeready, not really.” He swallowed, seemingly unable to hear the pounding of my heart. “I just don’t give a fuck anymore. I—I care about you, Seth. And I don’t want to lose you because I’m a fucking dumbass.”
I gaped at him. Despite the handful of hours of sleep I’d just gotten, I was still too tired and too wrung out to process what he was telling me. It felt like a hallucination, something my sleep-deprived brain had conjured up as some sort of defense mechanism because my heart was too battered to keep being rejected.
Elliot swallowed again, lifting his brilliant hazel eyes to study my features. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. Not yet—fuck, maybe not ever, given the shit I’ve put you through. But if you can—if you can, someday, I’d like another chance. But there’s no rush—you can take your time to think about it.”
Beside us, the oven timer went off, and I flinched away from it.
Elliot gave me a rueful smile, small and lopsided, and then pulled a pan of roasted potatoes out of the oven. “You don’t have to say anything,” he told me. “We can talk about it later. When you want to.Ifyou want to.” He let out a sigh, not looking at me. “I told myself I wasn’t going to bring it up right now. That you had to go back to work, and it was a dick move to just dump this on you.” He let out a bitter bark of a laugh. “And then I went and fucking did it anyway.”
He set the pan of potatoes down on some hot pads that he must have put out for precisely that purpose. As soon as thepan was on the counter and out of his hands, it was my turn—I reached out and grabbed his jaw, bending to kiss him.
Strong and calloused hands gripped my forearms—but not to push me away. He kissed me back, all of the kisses I’d imagined over the long months between when we’d met and this moment all poured into my lips and tongue until I drew a soft moan from Elliot’s throat. I pulled back, breathless, and looked down into eyes that danced with cracked crystal in green and gold and brown. He grinned up at me. “Is that a ‘yes, Elliot, you can have another chance’?”
I nodded, biting my lower lip.
He kissed me again, and I melted into him, feeling my heart and eyes full to the point of spilling over.
It was my growling stomach that broke us apart, Elliot’s fingers on the back of my skull pulling my forehead to his.
“You need to eat, baby,” he said softly. It has been a while since he’d called mebaby. It sent warmth sliding through me.
I knew he was right, but I wanted to keep kissing him. I wanted to do more than kiss him.
“We’ll come back to this,” he said softly, his fingers running through the short hairs on the back of my neck. “I promise.”
I nodded, but he had to be the one to step back.
“Sit,” he told me, and I obeyed.
He brought me a full plate—homemade biscuits, my gravy, turkey bacon, potatoes, scrambled eggs—and then poured me coffee from my thrift store french press. “Thanks,” I murmured, emotion thick in my throat as I poured some of my dairy-free creamer into the cup of coffee.
“You’re welcome.” He made himself a plate, joining me at the table. “If—If you want to talk about it—the case—or… whatever—I’m here.” His mouth twitched, but not in a smile. “I know you probably can’t say much about work, and I’m not asking. Just… if you need to vent.”
He wasn’t helping me to keep the tears in check. “Thanks,” I managed, although I definitely didn’t sound normal.
Elliot reached out and squeezed my hand for a moment before turning back to his breakfast. “I know it’s hard, what you do,” he said softly. “I know what it did to Val, sometimes. I also know that you can’t always talk about the specifics. And if you don’t want to talk about it, or talk about it to me, you don’t have to. But I’m here. For whatever.”
I nodded, unable to keep a few tears from escaping my eyes. Wrung out as I was, there was no chance of keeping my feelings in check anyway, and adding this on top of Elliot’s sudden declaration of romantic interest, and I was an emotional disaster. At least I had enough self-control to stay in human skin, although every nerve ending was buzzing.
“Seth—” His brow furrowed with concern or worry or something like it.
I shook my head. “It’s just—I’m just a mess,” I said. “Sorry.”
He put his hand over mine again. “Don’t be sorry,” he told me. “I—I’m sorry. I should have kept my stupid mouth shut, at least until you were done with work for good today.”
I gave him a weak and watery smile. “I’m glad you didn’t,” I told him.
Lacy toldme to “go the hell home” a little after six. Colfax had come all the way into Shawano to ask a million and a half questions about what we’d found in the barn fire. The orc been pacing my lab with its combination of sad old and shiny new equipment, talking mostly under their breath for the past three hours. They’d just left, which was the point at which Lacy told me she was going home and I should, too.
I wasn’t.
I was going to Elliot’s. Because ofcourseI was going to Elliot’s. He’d kissed me. Said he cared about me. I’d barely been able to think about anything else all day, and had almost dropped half a dozen different slides and plates and nearly knocked my microscope off my makeshift lab table with my elbow because I’d lost all spatial awareness in my semi-delirious fog of romance.
