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Serena was going to break up with Bernie.

She hadn’t said it. But Bernie knew.

Serena had been distant for an entire week since their last date, not responding to her texts or responding tersely, hours later. She hadn’t invited Bernie over any of the times she had seen her at work—and she had barely seen her at work, Serena always seeming to find pressing business to take care of elsewhere the minute Bernie came into their shared office or came up next to her at the nursing station. When Bernie had finally broken down and actually offered on her own—via text, since apparently that was the only way Serena wanted to hear from her—to come over, Serena had turned down that offer.

And then today, Serena had called in to work, something that hadn’t happened even in the extreme awkwardness after their first kiss.

And worst part was, Bernie didn’t even know what she had done.

She couldn’t stop running over that last date trying to find the one moment when she had ruined everything. At first it seemed impossible. She cast her mind back, and at first she could only see Serena’s smile, warm and wide, when she opened the door. Serena’s eyes, dark and sparkling, as they met her own across a glass of Shiraz, her foot stroking lazily up and down Bernie’s calf under the table. Serena’s mouth, hot and insistent, sucking a possessive mark against her throat, that rich voice husking thick with desire against her skin, god, I’ve wanted you all day…

But memories were fickle things, fragile and unreliable, and as Bernie ran her fingers over them like trying to read the traces left behind by a pen pressed hard into paper, she felt them fold and waver in her anxious, too-tight grip. Had that smile reached Serena’s eyes when she opened the door, or had Bernie been staring too intently at that fresh coat of sinful red lipstick to see? Had Serena been gripping a little too tightly at that wineglass? When Serena’s eyelashes had fluttered shut against Bernie’s neck, was it because of what Bernie was doing with her fingers, or because she was picturing someone else?

Maybe it had been the date itself. Serena had had a long shift the next day but insisted she would be fine; maybe Bernie had let wishful thinking color how insistent she thought Serena had been, and Serena would dump her for her thoughtlessness. Maybe it was that long silence that had stretched out as they held each other’s gaze over their wine. It had felt warm and intimate and as if everything that could possibly be said was being said in each other’s eyes, but perhaps to Serena it had been horribly awkward and she had wished Bernie would just say something. Maybe it was the way Bernie had abandoned Serena for twenty minutes when they got home to listen to Jason explain something called the Faction Paradox; Bernie had thought that squeeze of her hand before Serena slipped away to put their leftovers in the refrigerator had meant, you’re a darling, thank you, I can’t be in these heels for another minute, but maybe Serena had wanted Bernie to wind up the conversation earlier, to slip upstairs and into bed with her right away, instead of making her wait until her nephew’s television schedule meant he had to cut his explanation short with a promise to complete it the next time he saw her, barring unforeseen circumstances including but not limited to medical emergency.

A small, scrappy voice in Bernie’s brain tried to pipe up at this point, gesturing wildly at the memory of Serena telling Bernie that very night how much she appreciated Bernie taking time for Jason—of Serena showing Bernie that appreciation with her hands, with her mouth, with—

Bernie slumped in her office chair and firmly told that voice to shut up.

What was the point of reliving the things she was never going to have again?

That she hadn’t deserved in the first place.

She ran her hand through her hair, glanced around at the paperwork that she should do but that she couldn’t imagine concentrating on now. Part of her knew that ignoring it would only make it worse—for one thing, Serena wouldn’t be best pleased—but it was late enough that it made no real difference to the hospital if she put it off until tomorrow, and since Serena was going to break up with her anyway, it wasn’t as if doing the paperwork was going to fix anything.

She felt scraped hollow inside, an empty alley where wind blew stray memories like scraps of trash, so bright her eyes couldn’t help but fix on them, so light they never quite landed within her reach no matter how she chased after them.

Maybe it was her late text after the date. Serena had texted right away, almost as Bernie was pulling out of the driveway: ‘Lovely time as usual. Have a good day at work darling x.’ And Bernie had seen it to smile at, and fully intended to text back at the next red light, but then a police officer had been in the lane next to her and she had decided to text back once she arrived at Holby, and then she had barely stepped out of her car before there was some kind of medical emergency involving at least one staff member’s family and possibly another’s ex—Bernie had let the nonmedical details wash right over her—and before she knew it, she was falling into her own bed, text still unanswered.

Serena had been understanding when Bernie apologized. But maybe she had finally realized that she did deserve someone who texted her back right away, who was thoughtful and communicative, who could actually think the words I love you without their heart seizing up painfully in their chest and their brain shouting at them to duck and cover.

Someone who could actually say them.

You can’t fix this. You can’t fix this this. You can’t fix this.

The words looped around and around in Bernie’s brain. She could feel her leg muscles twitching with the need to flee, all the bloody way back to Kiev if she had to—

But it had been true, what she had told Serena when she came back.

She never wanted to feel that terrible lonely feeling again.

And if that meant feeling this instead—this looming sense of doom, like a shadow pressing down on top of her until she couldn’t breathe—she’d feel that as long as she had to.

God, she was pathetic.

She stood, determined to escape the hospital before one more memory could ambush her.

“Bernie!”

Well. No such luck then.

“Jason.” Bernie gave a pained smile, tried her best to make it look genuine. “How are you doing?”

“Awful,” Jason said bluntly. “Auntie Serena packed the wrong crisps for my lunch today, so I had to get them out of the vending machine for lunch, where they are fully thirty-two percent over the national average of crisps prices. And I don’t think she remembered to tape my shows for me. She was very evasive in her last text.”

“Well, she’s got a lot of things on her mind.” Like breaking up with me.

Jason huffed. “Well, then she should say them and get them off her mind, and then perhaps she could remember important things. Why don’t people do that?”

“It’s an enduring mystery,” Bernie said, mostly to be saying something. She levered herself through the doorway. “Well, it was lovely talking to you, Jason, but I’d best be heading home—”

“Aren’t you coming over?” Jason’s brow creased.

“Your aunt didn’t invite me,” she said carefully.

Her stomach twisted at the thought of how Serena breaking up with her would impact Jason. Perhaps it was best to start distancing herself now—but no, that wasn’t fair to him. Or to Serena—she wouldn’t stop Bernie from seeing Jason, who had so few friends and treasured the ones he did keep. She would grit her teeth and be civil to Bernie, for him.

It made love and worry knot themselves inextricably in her heart to think of the way Serena would sacrifice herself, over and over again, for the people she cared about.

Never should have got close to her. Never should have got close to Jason. Never should have come back from Kiev—never should have come back from the desert, where you could die any second and that made everything so simple--

Bernie firmly shook herself, and forced herself to focus on Jason, who was frowning slightly as he tilted his head in consideration of her words.

 “I didn’t think you needed an invitation to come over.”

Stupid how Bernie couldn’t help but be warmed by that.

“Perhaps not,” she said, blinking past a bit of treacherous wetness that had come to her eyes for no reason. “But still…”

“I personally do prefer it when people ask,” Jason went on blithely. “Especially when they do so ahead of time, so that I can adjust my television schedule. But Auntie Serena says that this is one of those situations where there are unspoken rules, which is frankly very ridiculous because how is anyone supposed to learn the rules if they’re unspoken?”

Bernie couldn’t help but agree with him there.

“Which I told to Auntie Serena,” Jason continued, “and she did her very deep sigh that means she wants to end the conversation but isn’t going to, which is similar to but distinct from her very deep sigh that means she is going to end the conversation and get a bottle of wine. And,” he said proudly, “through persistent questioning I managed to pin her down on the general principle being that when you love someone enough that the answer to ‘can I come over’ is yes 100% of the time, then they don’t need an invitation.”

The moisture in Bernie’s eyes had unaccountably increased, making her view of Jason quite misty. There was also a lump in her throat that was rather hard to speak past. “I’m…not sure that applies. To me.”

Anymore, she added silently. Because Serena had loved her once, or had thought she had—she had as good as said it right before Bernie fled to Kiev.  But now it seemed Serena was realizing that Bernie wasn’t what she wanted after all.

 “Well, I am,” Jason said confidently. “She always lets you have the larger half of her chocolate bar. She doesn’t drink nearly as much wine when you come over. She smiles at you all the time, and last week she ran into a patient because she was staring at you when you bent over to put something into the wastebasket.”

Startled, Bernie laughed. “She said she was looking at her chart!”

“She lies all the time,” Jason said in the kind of lowered voice most people would have reserved for much greater personal failings. “Especially about what she’s feeling. It’s very frustrating.”

“I—I suppose,” Bernie said carefully, “that sometimes it’s easier to lie than to—to make yourself vulnerable—”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Jason said. “Because it’s obvious. Whenever you don’t come over, she stares at her phone instead of paying proper attention to the puzzles. Sometimes she lets the food burn when she’s reheating it. Whenever I tell a story about my day, she tells me one about you.”

Bernie considered this additional evidence, a light, hopeful feeling tentatively winding its way through her.

“I suppose I could come over,” she began. “Just—to say hello, and then if I’m not wanted—”

“Of course you’re wanted,” Jason said indignantly, though whether more at the idea or the fact that Bernie was so hesitant to accept his expert testimony it was difficult to say. “She loves you! Besides,” he added, “I think she could use something to take her mind off being sick.”

“Right, well, I suppose then I—” Jason’s last sentence suddenly penetrated the fog. “Wait, WHAT?”

#

Serena felt miserable.

Her sinuses felt like they were going to explode. Her head was pounding, her nose was running just enough that she needed a constant supply of tissues but not enough that she could get in a really good satisfying blow, her stomach protested at the slightest movement, and her eyes flinched from any kind of light.

This was not stopping her from staring at her phone screen.

Curling tighter in the rumpled sheets and scrubbing at the chapped skin below her nose with an already damp tissue, Serena read, for the umpteenth time, her text conversation with Bernie last night:

‘Thought maybe I could stop by later?

Sorry, best not. Lot of work to do.

Okay. #see you later’

“That’s not how you use hashtags,” she muttered under her breath. Laughed a little, even though it made her head hurt. God, she was so far gone, that Bernie’s technological illiteracies just endeared the woman to her even more.

She knew she shouldn’t text Bernie back. She had just texted her last night. She had talked to her on the phone briefly a few days before, when her throat wasn’t so sore and she could play off the hoarseness as the hour of the night.

If she texted tonight she would look desperate, and if there was one thought she absolutely could not countenance, it was looking desperate in front of Bernie.

“Especially as it happens to be true,” she mumbled to herself.

She could still see, clear as day, the mounting panic in Bernie’s eyes when she’d slipped: I have been in love before, you know. I do recognize the symptoms. The way Bernie’s eyes had widened as Serena had protested her departure in more and more uncontrolled hysterics, practically clawing at Bernie trying to get her to hold still until Bernie had to flee to escape her grasping hands.

The way, when Bernie came back, Serena had tried so hard to be cool and unaffected, and had still almost driven Bernie away until Jason had locked them together in their office.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it

She heard the key in the door, and then the hinges and tromp of feet, Jason’s voice. He was louder than usual, chatting animatedly with someone—had he finally made some friends on that Doctor Who online forum? Or some of the porters? Hopefully someone more trustworthy than that last crowd he had been hanging around with— She should probably investigate, some day when she wasn’t wishing herself dead.

She heard footsteps climbing the steps to the second floor, then pause outside her door; was Jason finally internalizing her lectures about knocking before entering? Would wonders never cease. She braced herself for nephew’s particular brand of concern; he meant well, she knew that absolutely, but he would forget that she was a bloody doctor and go on a thirty minute monologue about the various vitamins her diet was deficient in and which studies had lately shown the negative effects of alcohol on the immune system—

She heard the telly turn on in the living room, the thump of someone sitting down on the couch, and Jason’s unmistakable cackle at something the presenter said.

But if Jason was there, then—

A knock, soft and cautious, against her door.

“Hello?” Serena rasped, her heart in her throat. If it was—it couldn’t be—she desperately wanted it to be—she was terrified it was—

“Hi.”

Bernie.

The door swung open, and it was utterly unfair how lovely Bernie looked, even with that little worry wrinkle between her brows as she hesitated over the threshold. Those soft blonde curls that Serena longed to card her fingers through, those long arms that she wanted wrapped around her, that crooked little smile that she wanted to kiss until it softened into certainty.

She looked so beautiful that for a full second, Serena forgot to panic.

But only for a second.

Serena shoved the phone under the pillow as speedily as if she had been looking at porn rather than a series of text messages. She scooped the worst the tissues into the wastebasket, trying to tug her nightgown into some kind of order at the same time. “Give a woman some warning—my hair must look a fright, and I’ve forgotten what the inside of a compact looks like—”

“Serena, I’ve seen you without make-up before.” Bernie was suddenly at her side, sitting on the bed. Gingerly, she reached out and stroked a piece of Serena’s hair between her fingers. “And you know I like your hair all sticky-uppy. In the mornings.”

She gave that uncertain little half-smile again, and Serena had to look down at her hands. Given that they were full of used tissues, it was not a pretty sight.

“And my face all splotchy and red?” She tried to make it playful, but it came out sharp instead; she felt Bernie tense on the mattress next to her. “My nasal passages turned into a mucus factory, that’s what really gets you going, Ms. Wolfe?”

Bernie’s hands twitched, and Serena’s stomach dropped—was she going to pull away?

 Then she slid her hand to the back of Serena’s neck, where it felt so nice and cool against her hot skin that Serena couldn’t help but close her eyes in relief. Her shoulders dropped, her breath sighing out slowly.

“Have you had anything to eat?” Bernie asked after several seconds of silence.

“A little broth,” Serena said grudgingly. “Two biscuits. And Jason brings me enough tea that I may wear out the plumbing.”

Bernie stroked the nape of the neck. “Trouble keeping things down?”

“Words every woman dreams of,” Serena muttered under her breath. “I’m not your patient, Bernie—”

“I know, I know,” Bernie said quickly, raising her hands in surrender—Serena immediately missed the contact, and tried not to think about how much. “You’re my—you’re—you’re special. To me.”

Great, make her think you were angling for some big romantic declaration, Serena. I wonder what the red-eye to Moscow is these days.

“I could bring you some more,” Bernie was going on, hesitantly. “Keep your strength up. Give the body the ammunition it needs to fight.”

“What are you, a WWII propaganda poster?” Serena grumbled. Bernie’s face fell; or rather, it did that particular thing Bernie’s face did to avoid falling, where it froze in place and displayed no emotion at all except for a slight widening of the eyes. Shame and regret jabbed sharp needles against Serena’s insides. She had done this; she always did this. “I suppose I could try. But you don’t have to—”

But Bernie was already rising, halfway out the door.

The second Bernie was out of the room, Serena leapt up, trying to set everything to rights. She gathered the rest of the tissues into the garbage; stumbled, head pounding, into the en suite and splashed water on her face and smoothed down the worst of her hair. Stared at herself in the mirror until that got too depressing and then slunk back into bed with a fresh dressing gown; fluffed the pillows and fussed at the sheets as if that would do anything.

Part of Serena had thought Bernie might have kept going out of the room all the way back to her car, but soon she heard movement in the kitchen. The thought of Bernie there, in her space, without her, was—confusing. Because it was so easy to imagine Bernie in that space, because she fitted in so well in Serena’s mind: Bernie, opening just the cabinet because she knew where Serena kept her cups; Bernie, sniffing at the top of the broth to make sure it hadn’t gone off; Bernie, settling her long frame back against the counter to wait while the microwave ticked off the seconds, comfortable and at home in a room she spent more time in than her own kitchen.

Serena had never seen any of this. But God, she wanted it to be true.

“Hi. Uh, again.”

Bernie stood in the doorway, slightly disheveled—had the ridiculous woman run up the stairs? That thought was definitely not making Serena’s heart beat rapidly, thank you very much—and holding a tray with a steaming cup of broth, a few digestives, and mug of ginger tea.

“Budge up a bit so I can rest this on your lap.”

“I can take care of myself,” Serena muttered, complying.

“I know.” Bernie set the tray carefully in place as though she thought it might shatter her. And quietly: “Shouldn’t have to, though.”

Serena felt those four words resound in her like a bell. She had to squeeze her eyes shut for a second to keep any more liquid from seeping out. Her lips shut to keep from blurting out something soppy and inadvisable.

God, she wanted to believe those four words so badly—

But it was safer, so much safer, not to believe. When four words, so gently said, could make you feel so exposed—could make you feel like you sat there with no skin, no mask, no kind of barrier or wall or protection—

Serena wrapped the dressing gown tighter around her, as if were armor.

“Right then,” she said, her voice clipped. “This your audition for the position, then? I hope you left my kitchen less of a disaster area than your desk.”

Bernie stiffened slightly, cleared her throat. “I’ll—I was going to clean it up later.”

“Of course you were,” Serena said acidly. “The way you’ve been ‘going to make space on your desk’ for a month.”

Bernie flinched again, and the dark iron taste of self-hatred surged in Serena’s mouth, settled low and roiling in her stomach. She hadn’t meant to hurt Bernie, had only wanted to distract her from seeing how vulnerable she was, sick and lonely and desperate. She ached to reach out to her, to smooth away that tightness in her jaw, to explain—

But Bernie was looking determinedly away from her now, and Serena felt the ‘sorry’ she knew she should say give up battering against the locked iron gate of her teeth, and slink away, shame-faced.

Might as well hurt her now as later. If she’s going to run away again it might as well be for the right reasons, because you hurt everyone, because you drive everyone away, your own mother, your own--

She turned her face to the tray and ate the food mechanically. It was delicious. It settled like stones in her stomach.

“Why…”

Serena looked up.

Bernie was peering up at her from beneath her fringe as if Serena were some sort of snarling lion—fair enough, Serena supposed—her hands fiddling together in her lap.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were…”

Before she could say the word ‘sick,’ Serena felt her stomach object violently to its most recent inhabitants.

“Oh, fuck—“

She managed to avoid spilling the tea as she scurried off the bed, but all thoughts of a graceful exit were lost as her stomach lodged further objections with the tenacity of an expensive barrister.

She barely made it to the en suite.

And she didn’t manage to shut the door.

She heard footsteps come up behind her as she gripped the edges of the porcelain seat, and thought, Great, just kill me now.

Then she was too busy to be thinking about anything.

Dimly, she was aware of Bernie kneeling down behind her. Bernie rubbing her shoulders as she threw up, her fingers running soothing circles through her hair as she knelt at Serena’s side, steady at her side.

It felt so…nice.

It felt so humiliating.

Serena wanted to sink into the earth.

“The honeymoon was nice while it lasted, eh?” she rasped instead when her body was no longer being racked by spasms. She rested her forearm against the cool porcelain, not yet feeling strong enough to lever herself up. “I know you didn’t sign up for this—”

“Pretty sure I did.”

“You don’t have to stay,” Serena went on determinedly. “I’ll be fine, I can deal with this, you shouldn’t have to—”

“If you’d rather I went…”

It was said so softly, her fingers dragging along Serena’s skin until only the hovering tips of them just touched, not quite withdrawing, not yet. It snagged something in Serena’s contrary heart.

She reached up with her other hand and covered Bernie’s with her own.

 “Stay?”

It came out dangerously close to a plea. She said it to the wall rather than Bernie, and her eyes burned.

Bernie squeezed her shoulder, helped her up and back to the bed. Sat down on the duvet next to her.

When the seconds passed and Bernie didn’t flee or fidget or make that small uncomfortable cough she sometimes did in long silences, Serena took a deep breath—as deep of a breath as she could manage—and lay down next to her, curling so that her head rested in Bernie’s lap.

She felt Bernie freeze, and she tensed against the inevitable withdrawal.

Then Bernie tugged a blanket over her shoulders, tucking it gently around her chin. It made Serena’s eyes well up, more than she could blink away this time. Bernie didn’t say anything, just stroked her fingers lightly through her hair.

“Mmm.”

Bernie’s fingers slowed.

“Don’t stop,” Serena said. It was easier than saying sorry, less frightening than saying please don’t leave; it was a swaying, dizzying hair’s breadth away from spilling out the I love you she kept locked tight behind her lips every time Bernie touched her, smiled at her, ordered her coffee in the morning with that softly pleased look on her face like a teenager picking up the tab at the end of his first real date.

Bernie resumed carding through her short hair. Neither of them spoke, Serena floating on the sensation of Bernie’s fingers stroking her scalp, the only thing keeping her from dozing off the guilt-pricking knowledge that Bernie had been about to ask her why she had been hiding her illness.

She could just not answer.  She knew Bernie wouldn’t ask her again, would let her keep her silence as the kind of mercy she herself would appreciate—Bernie had always retreated into silence as a shelter, and she would extend that shelter to Serena like an offering. It was so tempting to let that silence envelope them like a soft blanket, smoothing over the edges of the sharp, unspoken things.

But what if they broke through, in the end? Pressed and pressed and cut that soft and gracious shelter to shreds, until they had nothing left to share?

“I didn’t want to worry you,” she said finally. It was the truth, if not all of it.

Bernie grunted, briefly gripped on Serena’s shoulder, tighter than before. “I was worried anyway.”

“I know,” Serena said, because she did, now that Bernie was here. Now that she wasn’t using all her energy to keep Bernie away, she could see the anxiety seeping through the cracks in the carefully cheery, neutral texts. Could feel in the way Bernie touched her, tentative, unsure. “I’m sorry. I—I didn’t want you to have to deal with this.”

Bernie frowned. Serena didn’t have to look up—she still couldn’t look at Bernie, and she knew that would be what would do her in in the end, not being able to gaze at those lovely lips and cheekbones and deep dark eyes, but she was holding out as long as she could—she could hear the frown in her voice clear enough to picture the way that little line creased her forehead. “Deal with…what?”

Serena wanted to smooth that little crease away with an ache that almost surpassed the feeling in her head. But she held on a little longer, addressed the swell of bedding in front of her face. “Me.”

 “Serena…”

Bernie’s voice was half-sorrow, half-disbelief; the voice in Serena’s head that always sounded like Adrienne whispered: pity.

“We just finally got the timing right,” Serena interrupted. Her voice wobbled on the last word, and she plowed forward in the hope that Bernie wouldn’t notice. “It—it took so bloody longer for us to get together, for me to even admit—and when I did—and then I tried to move us too fast and I scared you away and I was just—a mess, for weeks. Drinking and snapping and—that’s the way I am. When things aren’t good, you haven’t seen— Things have been so good lately, so good, and I just—I wanted to give you a little more time before you had to look at the reality of—of being with me.”

Bernie huffed a little. “I do know you’re human, Serena.”

Serena fussed with a loose thread at the edge of the duvet. “You seem a little…superhuman, sometimes.”

Bernie barked a laugh. “And how many back rubs have you given me?”

“It’s not the same.”

“It bloody well is,” Bernie argued. “My heart is held together by sticky tape and hope, my knee lets me know if there’s bad weather in the next hemisphere, I can’t sleep half the time, I—” she breaks off. “Look, if it’s make you feel better I’ll wake you up next time my back’s plaguing me and ask for help.”

“Promise?”

“Even if you have a double shift.”

Serena couldn’t help but smile. “Okay.”

Bernie shifted behind her, not breaking contact as she lay down next to her on the bed, her arm wrapped around her waist.

It was a very sweet moment, so naturally Serena’s lungs chose that moment to wrack her body with a cough that seemed determined to shake them both off the bed, the sound thick and wet and hacking.

“Oh god,” Serena groaned when she was done.

“Shh,” Bernie whispered, ghosting  a kiss to her temple. “It’s okay. Rest.”

“Sorry,” Serena said anyway. She interlaced her fingers with Bernie. “Not exactly the stuff of fantasies today, I’m afraid.”

“You’ve heard my snoring,” Bernie pointed out.

“Darling, Venezuela has heard your snoring.”

Bernie chuckled, and squeezed Serena’s hand. After a moment, she said, “This is my fantasy, actually.”

Serena twisted her head back to face Bernie, raising an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah.” Bernie wet her lips but didn’t look away. “I’ve not really…had this kind of relationship before. Where I could take care—Marcus at the beginning, maybe. But after a while…I suppose he got used to me being gone, taking care of himself. He seemed to resent it when I was there, that I didn’t know what he needed without asking, that I got it wrong. And with Alex…well, that was never an option, for obvious reasons.” There was a long pause, and her gaze flickered away from Serena’s eyes before coming, determinedly, back. “I’ve never really got to—to be there for someone. To take care of them.”

Serena swallowed, hard. “I don’t want to drive you away,” she whispered. “If it’s too much.”

Bernie cupped her cheek.

“You’re not too much, Serena.”

And then Serena had to bury her face in Bernie’s shoulder, because she was really and truly crying, and there was no hiding it at all. She fisted her hands in the back of Bernie’s shirt and clung as tightly as she could, because she had never, in no moment of her life, been so entirely seen, and it was terrifying and it was mortifying and she could not, under any circumstances, let it go now that she had had it.

And Bernie didn’t run away.

She wrapped her arms around Serena in this new angle, kissed her ears, her temples, the top of her head. Said softly:

 “Let me stay?”

And Serena heard: I love you.

Serena felt something unfurl inside of her, some small and beaten animal thing slowly stretch and extend itself to trust the hand reaching out to it.

It felt…good.

“Okay.”