Chapter 12 #2
Intimidating implied distance—something you adjusted around so you didn’t get caught off guard. Most of my life had been exactly that: reading rooms before I stepped into them, measuring tone, watching hands, and tracking every small shift so nothing ever hit me unprepared.
Henry didn’t leave space for that.
Everything seemed to recede the second he focused on me, like the world loosened its grip and I didn’t have to hold it together by force. No scanning. No bracing. No constant recalculating of where I stood or how quickly it could change.
I could just exist.
My thumb found the rim of the mug again, the motion steady even as everything else in me ran at a breakneck speed.
Explaining it would flatten it into something smaller than it actually was.
It wasn’t just that he saw me.
People said that shit all the time, like it was simple, like being seen didn’t usually come with conditions or expectations or the subtle pressure to become something easier to hold.
With him, there was none of that.
No adjustment. No reshaping. No version of me that needed to be easier.
He just… took me as I was, and I didn’t realize how much I’d been waiting for the opposite until it didn’t happen.
Because somewhere between standing outside his office door like I needed permission to breathe in his space and the way his lips felt against mine—I stopped feeling like I had to earn it.
Maybe it should’ve scared me.
But it didn’t.
It felt like stepping into a place I didn’t know I’d been looking for, and realizing, too late and all at once, that I wasn’t trying to leave.
The scrape of ceramic against the table pulled me back, the waitress sliding a small cup between us without breaking stride.
Rhys didn’t even look up before grabbing it, bringing it straight to his mouth like it was oxygen. A low, satisfied groan dragged out of him on the first sip, eyes closing briefly like he’d just been brought back to life.
“Jesus,” he muttered into the rim. “Finally. Something that doesn’t taste like a cavity.”
He took another sip, studying me over the edge of the cup. “…You’re gone.”
I blinked. “I’m sitting right here.”
“Nope.” He lowered the cup just enough to point at me. “You’re gone gone. Like, mentally halfway back in his office.”
“Well, can you blame me?” I wondered, and he grinned.
“So.” He glanced around himself, wiggling his brows before speaking from the corner of his mouth. “Was it just a kiss or did he bend you over his desk?”
“Rhys!”
He didn’t even flinch, just took another slow sip like he hadn’t said something completely unhinged in the middle of a diner.
“What?” He set the cup down with exaggerated care. “I’m asking clarifying questions.”
“You’re being insufferable.”
“I’m being thorough,” he corrected, eyes lighting up again. “There’s a difference.”
I dragged a hand down my face, but it didn’t do anything to hide the heat creeping up my neck.
“It was a kiss,” I said. “Just a… really fucking good one.”
Understatement of the century.
Rhys made a low, skeptical sound, leaning back in his seat like he’d just been handed the worst lie of his life. “Arch.”
“It was,” I insisted.
“Right,” he said slowly. “And I’m the Queen of Sweden.”
The bell over the door chimed. My head lifted on instinct. Otto was at the counter, leaning in just enough to hear the waitress over the noise. He turned a fraction, gaze catching on me as a big grin split his face. “Hey, kid!”
“Hey,” I called back, already sliding out of the booth.
Otto always looked a little more worn than I remembered—like the world had taken its swings and he’d let it.
He had dark hair that was pushed back without much care and a mustache that should’ve made him look older than he did. His jacket was the same one he wore when I was a kid—the kind that looked better the more it got beaten up by weather and time.
Rain clung to the fabric, small droplets catching along the shoulders, darkening the brown just enough to notice. He didn’t seem bothered by it.
He never really seemed bothered by much.
His hands were already moving by the time I reached him, tugging at a pair of worn leather gloves like he’d been in the middle of something before he came in. “You’re out early.”
He finished pulling the glove, smoothing the leather down at the wrist with his thumb before finally glancing up. “You eat?”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the booth. Plates piled high with pancakes covered our table. Rhys had already demolished half a stack, both cheeks full when he caught Otto’s attention and grinned like an idiot.
“Mr. Keller!” he called around the bite. “What’s up?”
Otto’s mouth hooked faintly, the creases at the corners cutting deeper as he glanced over. “Hey, Rhys.”
“How’s my mom?” I blurted.
My fingers dragged across the sticky laminate until they caught an abandoned sugar packet. It rolled between my thumb and forefinger, folding, then flattening, then repeating.
Otto watched that instead of my face. “She’s alright.”
Alright.
Not good.
But not falling apart either.
“I tried to call her this morning.” I pressed the packet flatter than it needed to be. “She didn’t answer.”
She’s mad at me.
“She’ll pick up,” he said.
I nodded, because she would. Eventually. I just wasn’t sure what version of grief would be on the other line.
“I mean… have you talked to her? Is she sleeping? She usually doesn’t after—”
“She’s sleeping, kiddo. I saw the kitchen light go out around eleven.”
“You don’t have to sugarcoat it, Otto. I’m not a kid anymore.”
His mustache twitched with the start of a smile. “You are to me. Still that same kid who took out my mailbox with his bike.”
“Abel called me a shit driver. Mom shoved a bar of soap in his mouth.”
God.
My hand curled toward my chest, pressing against the ache that bloomed under my ribs.
Even the happy memories hurt.
“Listen.” He tapped the back of my hand where I was wrecking the sugar packet. “You don’t have to process things the same way your mama does.”
“She called you though? When the article dropped.”
“When it was reported, actually. She’s got the scanner on again.”
I used to fall asleep to that thing humming through the house—dispatch chatter bleeding under my door, voices I didn’t know saying names I never forgot.
“I checked in with the precinct,” he went on. “They sent the file over.”
“And?”
“Seven-year-old boy. Next county over.”
“Jesus.”
He pressed his hand once into my shoulder. “That’s where it stops. Nothing else lines up.”
“You’re sure?"
“It’s not connected, kiddo,” he swore. “Just reads close on paper.”
The sugar packet collapsed in my hand.
“Your mom’s just trying to stay ahead of it. Gives her something to hold on to. Doesn’t mean you have to pick it up with her. You’re allowed to let some of it pass.”
The waitress stepped in, dropping a crumpled brown bag onto the counter with a soft thud. The top was folded over too tight, grease already bleeding through in dark spots.
“Order for Keller,” she barked.
Otto reached for it, smoothing the crease down with his palm, like he could fix the way it had been handled just by touching it.
He always did that—made things look steadier than they actually were.
“Tell her I’ll stop by later,” I said.
“I will.”
His gaze lingered for a second—the same look he used to give me when I was a kid standing in his driveway with scraped knees.
Then he turned, giving me one last smile over his shoulder before disappearing out the front door with the sharp chime of the bell.
I stayed there a beat longer, the flattened sugar packet stuck to the damp of my palm.
I should call her.