He exhaled slowly, squeezing my hand. “This is a no?”
“It’s a not right now.” I slipped my hand from his and grabbed my purse. “Maybe not ever. I don’t know.”
He nodded. Once. Then again. Like he had to keep doing it to accept the answer.
“Okay. This isn’t what I’d been hoping for, but I get it.” He sounded resolved. “I’ll wait. I’ll chase you. I’ll prove myself to you. As long as it takes.”
He followed me to the door where I paused with my hand on the knob. “Thank you for tonight. Even if nothing more happens between us, I’m relieved I can look back on our night together and know it was real.”
“It absolutely was. Every second.”
I let my eyes fall closed. Heaviness weighed on my shoulders, and I wished, not for the first time, I was a little easier—that I could let go of old hurts and grab onto all the good right in front of me. But my past had taught me to be cautious. To tread lightly. Even if the ground seemed solid, there was always a chance it would give way and send me falling.
“You should know, I’m not easy to catch anymore,” I warned.
He was so close, the warmth of his body radiated at my back. If I were the Bea of two years ago, I would have leaned back and soaked it up. As it was, I had to hold on tight to the knob to stop myself.
His fingers grazed my shoulder, so featherlight I might have imagined it.
“I don’t mind hard work.”
“Good night, Tore.”
As I stepped outside, his soft promise floated into the night with me.
“To the chase, Bea.”
Chapter Fourteen
Salvatore
Bea:Hey, Ant. Can you tell me about grief?
Me:Would you like the definition, or something deeper?
Bea:I know the definition, dude. I guess…I don’t know what I’m asking. Tell me anything.
Me:Some believe grief is the closest emotion to fear.
Bea:The terror of loss and the unknown. I see that. Tell me something else.
Me:I’ll tell you anything you want.
Thereweren’tmanyproblemsI couldn’t solve with technology. TheAt Your Serviceapp had started as a tool—analgorithmic extension of my instinct to help, to care for Bea, even when I couldn’t be physically present in her life.
At the time, I thought I’d been doing something noble, even if a little underhanded.
But things had snowballed.
The temptation to peek in on her chats withAnthonyhad gotten too great to resist. One peek had led to two and then dozens. Eventually, I stopped letting the AI handle her messages almost entirely. Most of the time, when Bea texted the app, she was talking to me.
She rarely spilled anything deeply personal, but there’d been enough to offer a firm bead on her life—what she needed, where she was going, who she was seeing. IfAnthonycould provide a service to make things easier for her, he did.
There were times, especially recently, I wondered if she knew it was me she was speaking to.
Probably not.
But I often thought about telling her. So she would know we’d been connected all this time—that I’d been looking out for her.
