“I was worried,” he says, interrupting me. He lifts our joined hands, holding them in the space between our bodies, and oh. His breath tickles the back of my hand. My sensitive, sensitive hand. Where all my talent and all my most secret thoughts come from. It’s like having clinging, confining bandages removed.

“Worried?”

“I kept thinking,” he says, his voice lower now—either my closeness or maybe the fatigue finally setting in. I take a step forward and shift our hands, making a small, inadequate pillow out of the back of mine for his brow. He takes the hint, letting the uninjured side of his forehead rest, warm and heavy, against my knuckles.

How must this look, this picture of us? A knight bowing in service to his lady. I see my name in an illuminated, medieval-manuscript style.

MARGARET THE BRAVE

“I kept thinking,” he says again, “it’d be hard for you, her leaving. And what if I missed it?”

“You didn’t.” My voice has lost all its steadiness, but it doesn’t much bother me now. The hand that’s not clutched to his—it lifts, seemingly of its own accord. I reach out and stroke my fingers through his thick mass of red-blond hair, and I think his whole body shivers. I think mine does, too.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t call.”

Reid the Repentant.

“It’s all right,” I say, stroking again. “Tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow,” he agrees, and then—as if to seal it—Reid lifts his head the smallest amount. Enough to press his lips against the back of my hand.

And that’s how Reid and I rest after the fight, waiting to get stitched all the way back together.

It’s a bold move, going back to the park.

We don’t so much plan it as we do walk our way to it, one of the many mutual, unspoken agreements we’ve come to over the course of last night and this morning. The promise we made to each other in that tiny treatment room—Tomorrow—has lived between us through every interaction we’ve had, something we both seem to be keeping sacred for full daylight, for full sobriety, for full assurance of no head injury. Inside the low-light, hushed quiet of my apartment, Reid had been polite, careful, helpful, a houseguest unsure of his welcome: Your place is nice. I don’t want to get blood on your couch. I can put the sheets down.