He moves, his body turning on the bench so we’re facing each other more. He looks between us, where my hands have been idly toying with the strap of my bag.

And then he reaches out and takes one, pressing our palms together and linking our fingers, the same as he did last night. I close my eyes at the feel of it.

He’ll protect you.

“Okay,” he says.

“I have three points.” I wince at how it sounds, this first attempt at saying what I mean. A little loud and slightly stiff, as though I’m about to start up a slideshow titled “Difficult Relationship Factors We Need to Address.” Practicing for this in the mirror wouldn’t have been the worst thing, if only six-foot-something of the man I’m trying to talk to hadn’t been sleeping on my couch all night.

Reid smiles crookedly. “Three, huh?”

I smile back. “Three. This is a numbers game, Sutherland.”

“Oh,” he says softly, still smiling that swoonsh. “My specialty.”

My specialty today. I’ve thought and thought about them, as if they were letters on a page: the order in which I’d say them. How I could make them strong enough, special enough, straightforward enough for Reid.

“One,” I say, knowing his smile is about to disappear. “What you said last night, about your skin—”

He tries to preempt me. “I’m not embarrassed by it. I’ve had it for a long time. Obviously I’d prefer if I didn’t, and I’d certainly prefer if you didn’t find it un—”

“I don’t find it anything except part of you. It’s only number one because you said it gets worse when you’re stressed, and your job—it always seems stressful to you. I see how you get, whenever it comes up. And if that’s part of why things were so off with us last week, then I want to know about it.”

Reid looks up from where our hands are joined, his eyes out on the wide expanse of park green as he answers me.

“My work is . . . stressful. Especially lately. When I came to see you last week, I’d had a particularly terrible day. When I looked back at it, afterward . . . I realized I should’ve passed on your invitation, gone home alone.” He looks back at me, rubs his thumb over the back of my hand in a way that makes me shift on the bench, an inconvenient pulse of feeling between my legs.

“But I wanted to be around you. You’re the only person here who doesn’t treat me like I’m a calculator. When I’m around you, I don’t think about numbers. It’s a relief.”