Chapter Text
Kate thinks of it a few nights later as they lie in bed with Lucy tucked under her chin. They don’t usually sleep this way, but Kate’s seen the way Lucy’s eyes linger on the ligature marks around her neck; the way Lucy can’t quite let Kate out of her sight, drifting like the tide into every room Kate’s in. In typical Lucy fashion, she doesn’t mention it. Not that night at Tennant’s trading war stories with the team or in either agency’s thorough debriefs. She is the consummate professional, bordering on cocky as she dictates notes for the report. With their ohana she’s more herself, quick to deflect Jane’s praise or shrug off Jesse’s concern to redirect the focus to the strength of the team: Kai’s foresight, Sam’s instincts, or Ernie’s skill.
But away from the bustle of the bullpen when it’s just them in their apartment, Kate sees it all. She sees Lucy’s eyes skitter away like they did in that storage room–So why dream?–every time she thinks Kate might try to start a conversation. Feels Lucy watching her like Kate might slip around a corner and disappear.
So Lucy is curled into Kate’s chest. And she’s crying. She does it as silently as Kate has learned she can when the source is fear. Not a single quake or tremor gives her away. Honestly, it’s terrifying. Kate doesn’t like to think about how often Lucy is able to mask her pain or hide her hurt if she’s this good from a hair’s breadth away. And fuck it if Kate is going to be the one to scare her off or make her face something she’s not ready to face.
So Kate takes what she can get. She tugs Lucy closer, combing her fingers through wild curls and bracing against her better instincts to pretend she doesn’t feel Lucy’s quivering breath on her neck or the tears pooling at her collarbone. She’ll do anything to be the one who gets Lucy like this–vulnerable and delicate; someone worth protecting, worth cherishing. Someone worthy of a fairytale.
Kate cleans out the craft store. It’s slightly obscene when she unloads it all from the bags and spreads it across the kitchen counter. She’s not sure how long she has before Lucy gets home from work, so she does what she can to arrange: unpackages the felt-tip pens and scrapbook paper; finds a cute basket for the double-sided tape and scalloped scissors; fans out a half dozen bridal magazines. She has just finished propping the foam board on the mini display easel she found on the clearance rack when she hears Lucy’s key in the door.
Unable to smother her self-satisfied grin, Kate slips into the kitchen and busies herself with the pan she left to soak from breakfast as Lucy comes around the corner.
“Hey, I told you I would get that when I got–”
Lucy stops short at the frenetic display.
“Why did my Aunt Yara’s basement throw up all over our kitchen?” Lucy asks, running her fingers over a pack of watercolor flower stickers. “Are you helping Julie with another school project?”
Lucy spins around to scan the apartment like Julie might pop out of a hiding spot. Kate moves around the sink to lean against the edge of the counter.
“It’s for you,” Kate answers, unable to keep the affection out of her voice.
Lucy’s puzzlement grows. She frowns and takes a closer look at the spread. Kate can see the exact moment the bridal magazines register. Lucy blinks slowly a few times before her dark eyes shift back up. Kate can’t quite read the expression there, but she offers what she hopes is an encouraging smile. She hasn’t quite planned the next part out like a speech, but she’s definitely thought about what to say. She tries hard to sound genuine and not rehearsed. She wants Lucy to feel the support and acceptance she deserves, that she never got from the people who should’ve given it without question.
“I love you so much–” Kate starts.
Lucy freezes. For a sudden, frightening moment Kate sees pure panic wash across her girlfriend’s face. Lucy’s nostrils flare and she takes a tiny step back, her hand reaching out to white-knuckle the top of the closest dining room chair. Not too long ago, it would’ve made Kate lose her nerve, but not anymore.
She’s learned to let Lucy come on her terms. Kate reaches out her hand, palm up, waiting with hard-won confidence. Lucy swallows but drops her hand in Kate’s. There is the tiniest tremble in Lucy’s grip.
Kate continues, eager to reassure, “–and I know we’re a long way from writing vows or picking centerpieces, but I want you to feel sure that I know we are building something real–”
Kate intends for that last part to sound like a promise, but it hangs in the air like a question. Before Kate can recover, the corner of Lucy’s lip quirks up. Her eyes soften like she’s starting to put the pieces together. She takes a step into Kate’s space, guiding Kate’s hand around her waist. Kate relaxes into the familiar embrace.
“I need you to know I’m in this. That I see a future for us. I want you to know that I see what’s possible–”
This time Kate cuts off because Lucy has claimed her mouth in a languid kiss. Kate sighs into it, both for the comfort it brings and for the heat it ignites low in her belly.
“You’re doing a lot of talking,” Lucy murmurs. Her hands slide into the pockets of Kate’s jeans. “Winding me up with visions of the future.”
Kate hums into another kiss. Her mouth opens at the flick of Lucy’s tongue. She loses herself in it for a beat, maybe longer, before something tugs at the back of her mind.
“Vision,” Kate mumbles into the space between their mouths. Her hands fall to Lucy’s hips, stopping her forward motion. “That’s what I’m saying, Luce. I’ve been thinking of what you said in that storage room. About not seeing the point in dreaming.”
Lucy pulls out of the dive she was taking toward Kate’s neck. Her eyes flash, but she doesn’t pull away. Lucy glances again at the supplies littering their kitchen.
“So–” Lucy lets the word linger, waiting for Kate to put it all together.
“So, I know that you said you never imagined marriage for yourself or even a wedding.” Kate hurries to clarify, lacing her hands around the small of Lucy’s back. She needn’t have worried because Lucy just leans in to leave an encouraging peck on Kate’s bobbing throat. “But you’ve already done so much that I bet you never imagined. You’re an amazing agent, solving crimes and catching bad guys–”
Lucy tries and fails to hide a bashful smile. A tiny blush creeps up her neck. Kate grins, too, glad to be getting this right.
“You’ve faced your greatest fear and made a home on a tropical island surrounded for hundreds of miles by nothing but open sea.”
Lucy sucks her teeth in mock outrage. Her fingers find the top of Whistler’s ass and twist a tiny pinch of skin.
“Hey!” Whistler laughs. “You’re ruining my monologue.”
“Fine.” Lucy sticks her tongue out. “Continue.”
Whistler sobers back into seriousness.
“You found your people. An ohana that’s got your back and loves you for exactly who you are. That trusts you to watch their six and know everybody’s coffee order and captain the fun after tough cases.”
“And you’ve got me.” Rocked by an unexpected surge of emotion, Kate swallows it down to push on in a wobbly voice, “In every way you need me. For as long as you want me.”
Kate lets Lucy pull her down into another kiss. This one is more chaste, all comfort. Lucy is the one to break it, intuiting that Kate has more to say.
“For a long time, I was too afraid to have this,” Kate gestures between them. “Something I was terrified to lose–because I didn’t think I could survive it again. But you showed me that it’s worth it, even if it’s scary. So I got all this stuff so you could start your own vision board.”
Kate juts her chin at the counter.
“You deserve to dream, Lucy. You deserve everything.”
Lucy is quiet. Kate knows she’s taking it all in, trying to integrate this new understanding with everything that’s happened. She studies Lucy’s face, but it’s carefully blank as she surveys the counter again. A tiny roll of unease turns over in Kate’s gut. Lucy steps away to rifle through the basket and then flips the pages of one of the magazines. Her face still isn’t revealing much. Kate wonders what she’s thinking but keeps silent.
Finally, Lucy turns to fix Kate with a look as familiar as it is coquettish. She practically stalks the three steps that separate them to pin Kate against the wall. Before Whistler can move or speak, Lucy’s mouth covers hers, hot and insistent. Lucy’s hand slides under Kate’s blouse. Her warm fingers splay across Kate’s belly, making her abs contract. Lucy groans into Kate’s neck; the faint scrape of her teeth punctuated by wet kisses blazing a downward trail. Lucy finds the hem of Kate’s shirt, tugging it up and over her head so her lips can continue their assault undeterred.
The Whistler in the back of Kate’s brain fires up, warning caution. They have a history of using physical intimacy as a stand-in for the kind of vulnerable conversations they’re both loath to have; the kinds of conversations that are necessary to grow, to move a relationship forward.
But they’re past that, right? Kate tries to think but any attempt at logic is utterly undone by the persuasiveness of Lucy’s hand sliding up over the swell of her breast to hook under her bra strap and drag it excruciatingly slowly over the curve of Kate’s shoulder.
Lucy’s mouth is drifting lower again. Her breath washes warm across Kate’s collarbone. Kate shivers. Talk. They should talk because there is so much to discuss. They haven’t even really had time to process everything that happened on the undercover mission–how it felt to worry a ring on that particular finger or how long it took Lucy to release her death grip on Kate and call the body in. Just thinking about it makes the hair on Whistler’s arms stand up.
Lucy dips her hand into the fabric of Kate’s bra, thumbing her nipple as she divests it from its cup. A whine pushes out from the back of Kate’s throat, and her chest thrusts forward of its own accord. Whistler shakes her head a little, trying again to clear it, but then Lucy’s mouth replaces her hand. She swirls her tongue around Whistler’s nipple in the way that Kate has learned means Lucy intends to take her time. Kate’s eyes flutter shut.
Time. Whistler blinks, trying to hang onto her faculties. Talk. Time. They should take the time to talk. Their foray into marriage revealed a lot. By all accounts, the operation was a success. They kicked ass and caught the bad guy as a bonafide team, but they also ventured into some new territory in that storage room that Kate knows they need to deconstruct.
But Lucy cants her hips impossibly closer until their whole bodies are flush. Kate is good and truly thrumming now.
“Hey, stay with me,” Lucy murmurs, soft and sweet.
She licks a line up the space between Kate’s breasts until she’s got Kate’s attention. Her eyes are charcoal black and dancing, looking up at Whistler from hooded lids.
“I have a pretty clear vision we can make come true right now,” Lucy whispers with a filthy grin.
She captures Kate’s mouth again, kissing so hard and commanding that Kate gasps. Lucy relents, staring wantonly at Kate’s swollen lips as her fingers find the waistline of Kate’s slacks.
“Let me show you what you deserve.”
Then, Lucy winks. Honest to god, winks, and Kate knows they won’t even make it to the bedroom. They have plenty of time to talk, she assures herself as Lucy thumbs open the clasp of her pants. All the time in the world, she tells herself as Lucy drops to her knees. Maybe forever, she thinks as she lets Lucy carry her out past any rational thoughts at all.
“So, you guys haven’t talked about it?”
“Well, I wanted to–” Kate says, fighting the instinct to get defensive.
This is Jane, her friend. Kate may not be so great at relationships and love and feelings, but she’s trying to be. And not just for Lucy. It’s been a long time since she had a best friend. In the spirit of creating visions of the future, she’s maybe ready to let herself have that again.
“–but one thing led to another and–” Kate flushes.
“Yup. Nope,” Jane says, gesturing with her wine glass. “I’m going to stop you right there.”
Kate grins. “Don’t need a visual?”
“I’m good,” Jane replies, chuckling. “Not enough wine in the world for that.”
Kate laughs. It feels good to do this. Jane is reminding her of all the things a family can be besides something to lose. There’s so much gain, too: like advice, like halving fear and worry by sharing it, like doubling the joy.
“But no,” Kate confirms, sobering a bit. “We didn’t talk about it. Not that night.”
Jane eyes Kate as she takes another sip of her Syrah.
“And you still haven’t?” she guesses. “Even though that was, what? A couple of weeks ago?”
“Well,” Kate hedges. “Work has been crazy for both of us. Lucy has that self defense class she’s teaching at the community center and Curtis has me presenting what I learned with the FBI cybertechnology unit over the summer, so that’s been weeks of prep because–”
Kate cuts off at the look on Jane’s face. Her friend’s eyebrow has been climbing the skeptical ladder throughout Kate’s tangent. Now, it’s nearly in her hair.
“Kate,” Jane says, both a warning and a reprimand in her tone.
Kate sighs. She glances toward the living room where Julie and Lucy are nested down in a mound of blankets playing Mario Kart. Lucy is a relentless trash talker, and Julie, as a completely devoted protege, is nearly as bad. Kate can’t make out what they’re saying, but she takes a beat to savor the floating sounds of their banter. Jane doesn’t push. That’s another thing Kate loves about her.
“What if she doesn’t–” Kate starts, but cuts off before her voice bends. She swallows and tries again. “What if we don’t want the same things?”
Jane hums into her glass. Her eyes follow Kate’s out to the sitting room where her daughter and her junior agent have burst out of their covers to stand inches from the TV. Their whole bodies maneuver their controllers like they can determine the outcome by sheer force of will.
“That would be hard,” Jane allows, voice soft. “That would be really, really hard for both of you.”
Jane doesn’t say anything else right away, but Kate can tell she isn’t finished. She lets the silence marinate. This is another thing that Kate appreciates about this friendship. Nobody can let a silence build like Jane Tennant. And sometimes, like now, in that space between the question and its answer, a story unfurls.
“You want to know the hardest part about getting divorced?” Jane asks, eyes finally meeting Kate’s in a gaze that does not shy away.
Kate nods, entranced. “What?”
“There were probably like three or four years when Julie was small–good years, important ones–that we both knew it was over. But life has ways of keeping you busy. We had two young kids. I was transitioning to NCIS. Daniel was building a football program from scratch. Life was crazy.”
“So you didn’t talk about it?” Kate ventures, anticipating a lecture.
“We did,” Jane responds, surprising her. “Or, we pretended that we did, but our hearts weren’t in it. We talked around it, you know?”
Kate swallows and nods because unfortunately, she does.
“Alex played baseball for one summer right when we moved here,” Jane says, seemingly changing stories. It should trip Kate up, but it doesn’t. Another thing she’s learned from Lucy. “He loved to slide into the bases, but he was terrible at it. Ripped a patch raw on his thigh,” Jane gestures to her leg, and winces.
“It wept this awful, sticky drainage that made the bandage stick,” Jane explains. “I came home one night to find him crying in his room. He was trying to peel the dressing off tiny piece by tiny piece.”
It’s Kate’s turn to make a face. Jane chuckles, nodding.
“I can still picture it: little dots of blood, the gauze flecked in his raw skin.” Jane swings her glass. “Just a complete mess. So I say to him, ‘Bud, you gotta let me rip it off.’ And he says, ‘But mom, won’t it hurt that way?’”
Kate bites her lip.
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth,” Jane answers immediately, her eyes holding Kate’s. “I told him that it would sting. Maybe it would even burn pretty badly, but then it would be over. If he did it my way, the hurt would be over way sooner.”
“So, he let you yank it off?”
Jane laughs. “Well, first he asked for a chocolate sundae, but then, yes, I pulled it off.”
Kate nods. She glances again toward the living room. Lucy and Julie are still standing hip to hip in front of the television, but the race must have ended sometime during Jane’s tale because Kate can see them browsing different courses. She can just hear the excited climb of Lucy’s voice as she points something out to Julie on the screen. When Kate turns back to Jane, her friend’s eyes are soft and understanding. She’ll wait as long as it takes for Kate to be ready.
“I peeked last night,” Kate admits, darting her eyes away from Jane’s face. “At the vision board. Lucy moved it from the kitchen to the floor next to her side of the bed. She covered it with a tea towel and told me I couldn’t see it until it was done.”
Kate doesn’t say anything for so long that Jane finally prompts her.
“But last night you looked?”
“It was blank,” Kate answers, voice barely audible. She finds Jane’s eyes again but doesn’t see an ounce of judgment. She repeats herself a little louder. “I peeked last night while Lucy was in the shower. It was totally blank. She hasn’t worked on it at all.”
Jane doesn’t tell Kate what she already knows: that it was a gross invasion of Lucy’s privacy to look; that maybe they haven’t progressed as far in their relationship as she claims if Kate is resorting to sneaking around to gauge her girlfriend’s feelings. Instead, Jane pulls the disparate threads of her parable together.
“We were afraid,” Jane says. She covers Kate’s hand with hers. “Daniel and I were afraid to rip the bandaid off, so we talked around it. We went to couples therapy, scheduled date nights, and planned extravagant family vacations. And all of it hurt for so much longer than it needed to.”
Kate squeezes the fingers wrapped around her own. Jane gives her a half smile before taking another swig of her wine. She pats Kate’s hand one more time before she leans back in her chair.
“Nothing Lucy does or doesn’t put on that board is going to tell you anything that you want to know.”
Jane glances into the other room and directs her next words to her daughter. “Start drifting just before you come up to the turn, babe, then release and you’ll get a little boost.”
“Thanks, Mom!” Julie hollers back.
At the same time, Lucy shouts, “Jane!”
“Maybe I should do the ice cream sundae first,” Kate tries for levity, but her smile wobbles. “I once watched Lucy eat a jumbo banana split in less than eight minutes because–”
The look on Jane’s face stops Kate’s deflection in its tracks. She blushes, but Jane just smiles and takes another sip of wine.
“Rip the bandaid off, Kate.”
Objectively, Kate knows what she’s doing is wrong. Not only did she feel guilty as hell the last time, but Jane Tennant–a person that Kate trusts; a person that has Kate’s best interest at heart; a person so full of integrity it’s nearly incomprehensible—explicitly told her not to do it.
Well, not in so many words, Kate reminds herself. Jane’s primary message was that Lucy and Kate needed to talk. To avoid unnecessary pain, they needed to sit down like grown-ups and talk about what they wanted and whether those things lined up. So really, Kate reasoned, Jane hadn’t said she shouldn’t look at the vision board again. She’d only pointed out that Kate needed to figure out a way to broach this important conversation sooner rather than later. If checking Lucy’s progress on the vision board expedited the conversation, couldn’t it be considered in line with Jane’s advice?
Kate does not wait to see if that line of questioning holds up under cross-examination from her conscience. She has no choice. Absolutely no more information can be gleaned from the supplies. That part she doesn’t feel bad about. She bought them, after all. Wasn’t it within her purview to see if anything needed to be restocked?
Her inventory of the craft basket indicated that Lucy had opened several of the packages and possibly torn out some pages of a bridal magazine. The tape had been unwrapped and fixed to the blade of the dispenser in a ready position. All signals indicated a strong possibility Lucy had done some work on her vision board. Honestly, Kate figures she pretty much has probable cause for this search.
In the end, it doesn’t matter much what her brain says because her hands act of their own accord. Overruling all objections, Kate kneels, and with shaky fingers tugs the towel from the easel, revealing the canvas beneath.
Kate’s heart sinks.
Blank.
It’s still blank. Kate pokes around the easel for a second, trying to see if she can dredge up a sticker or a gown cutout from the dust bunnies gathering at the base of Lucy’s nightstand. After only a moment of contemplation, she eases open the drawer. In for a penny; in for a pound.
Lucy’s nightstand is stuffed full of random receipts, chocolate wrappers, and the new Meg Shaffer novel that Lucy is reading, but no lace doilies or Just Married puffy stickers. Whatever Lucy has or hasn’t done, there is no evidence of it here. Fighting irrational tears, Kate reaches for the towel to recover the board. Lucy’s voice stops her in her tracks.
“What are you doing?”
Kate’s stomach shoots to her throat. She spins around so hard that she falls back onto her butt. Kate tries to think of something to say. Anything at all that would justify snooping like this.
She opens her mouth to apologize, but what comes out is, “You’re not supposed to be home yet.”
It might’ve been better if it had come out angry. If Kate had gone with the you-gave-me-no-choice defense. Instead, the words tumble out a pitch too high and completely panicked.
Lucy raises a single eyebrow in a look so vintage Jane Tennant that in any other circumstance, Kate would take a second to marvel at the parallels between teacher and student, but in this case, leveled at her in a clear moment of wrongdoing, it simply takes her breath away.
“I let my class go early so I could have a quick lunch with you,” Lucy is looking curiously at her like she’s still trying to piece together exactly what she’s seeing. To Kate’s horror, Lucy holds up a bag. “I got take-out from that new Thai place you wanted to try. I thought we could have a balcony date before your presentation this afternoon. Celebrate your awesomeness.”
Kate’s stomach plummets back to its designated area in her gut and rolls so hard that Kate covers her mouth with her hand. Her gorgeous, thoughtful, fearful-of-milestones girlfriend came home early to surprise her and caught her red-handed. It hadn’t even occurred to Kate to think about that during her internal debate. She’d been so wrapped up in trying to decide whether her actions were justified that she hadn’t thought about what it would be like to see Lucy’s face at the very moment that understanding dawns.
“But you’re busy,” Lucy says in a tone that Kate can’t name. “You didn’t expect me, so you’re what? Snooping through my stuff?”
“It’s blank,” Kate blurts out, unable to help herself. “Your vision board. You haven’t done anything yet.”
“So, it’s not sneaking if you don’t find anything?” Lucy shoots back, looking incredulous. “Are you serious right now?”
Kate expects anger. She knows that she deserves it, so it makes her feel even more monstrous when Lucy’s eyes fill with tears. Kate springs to her feet. She reaches out for Lucy, fully expecting her to retreat but she doesn’t. She lets Kate pull her into a hug that she doesn’t return.
“Luce, I’m so sorry,” Kate whispers into Lucy’s hair, wrapping her arms around the smaller frame. “I just wanted to know what you were thinking about us, about the future. You hadn’t decorated it, and I got that stuff weeks ago. I just got in my head about it. That’s all.”
Lucy doesn’t pull away, but her body is stiff in Kate’s arms. Kate sighs, trying to slow her racing heart. She releases Lucy and moves backward to sit on the bed.
“Say something,” Kate begs.
She almost immediately regrets it because when Lucy finally turns her eyes on Kate, they are weary and wet.
“So, this wasn’t the first time that you looked at it?” Lucy deduces, glancing at the board and then back to study Kate. “You’ve been keeping tabs on it?”
Kate swallows. Her thoughts have slowed to sludge, frozen by the devastated look on her girlfriend’s face. As much as she was tapping into her lawyer side a few minutes ago, she hadn’t thought to consider Lucy’s investigative instinct. Kate cannot think of a single thing to say.
“I only looked one other time,” she confesses, hoping complete transparency might pacify the caged-in stance Lucy has taken up across from her. “Lucy, listen, I–”
But Lucy doesn’t listen. She paces away from Kate to the window, aiming her next words at the horizon where the waves are washing ashore, steady and dependable.
“So when you said I deserve to dream, that I deserve everything, that didn't include privacy or time to work through my feelings?”
“Luce,” Kate’s voice hiccups. She’s rocked hard by the knowledge that she’s been here before.
Something about Kate’s raw emotion draws Lucy back. She turns and meets Kate’s eyes with a gaze that does not waver. It would be unnerving except that her voice has taken on a soft, almost contemplative tone, like Lucy is uncovering the truth–solving the case.
“You meant I deserve to have anything I want as long as you want it, too, and on your terms.”
“No! That is not true! Lucy, you know that’s not true!”
It bursts out of Kate like gunfire, but Lucy doesn’t even flinch. She rakes her eyes across Kate’s face. Kate knows she’s taking in the shame and mortification and the little kernel of righteousness that Kate can’t completely squelch.
Lucy nods like Kate has confirmed something for her. It sets another bubble of panic going in Kate’s belly. She debates moving closer again, but Lucy still has the look of a cornered animal. Whether she’s more inclined to fight or flight, Kate can’t quite tell. Before Kate can decide what to say, Lucy nods again, more vigorously.
“Okay,” Lucy allows. “Tell me something true.”
“I love you,” Kate returns. She doesn’t even have to think about it. It’s the truest thing of all. “I love you so much.”
There are a number of things that Lucy could say to that. She could argue the obvious: that love has to have a foundation of trust and respect. Lucy has every right to demand an apology, which Kate is already formulating in the back of her brain. The smaller woman might even take her earlier indictments a step further and point out the similarities between Kate’s current behavior and the very reasons she came to Hawaii in the first place, on the run from parents who wielded love as control. That last one redoubles the sick feeling in Kate’s stomach.
But it turns out that Lucy doesn’t get a chance to say anything. At just that very moment, Lucy’s phone emits the ringtone that means Tennant is calling.
To her credit, she hesitates for a long moment. Kate can see something conflicted skitter across her face, but then Lucy reaches into her pocket.
“Hey, boss,” Lucy greets, turning slightly away from Kate to answer, facing the shoreline again. “I was going to call you after my class finished, but I got held up. We catch a case?”
The late morning sun from the window falls like a golden veil across the profile of Lucy’s face: her sharp jaw, those exquisite cheekbones, the spray of curls she pushes out of her eyes. But what Kate is most struck by is the effortless way Lucy smoothes out all the hurt edges of her voice. In a fraction of a second, the fault lines in her tone magically stitch themselves back together until she’s Lucy Tara, junior agent for the first female SAC of the Pacific Rim. Like she’s not standing in an emotional crater holding takeout. Like absolutely nothing is wrong.
On the other hand, Kate feels like she’s on the verge of falling apart. There is something heavy and suffocating lodged in her chest. She can barely breathe around it, and every second that passes with Lucy’s pain all buttoned up like that, Kate’s threatens to burst out of every part of her. By the time Lucy ends the call and turns around, Kate is crying.
Lucy softens, which makes Kate feel awful. She swipes at her tears, but it’s useless.
“Jane needs me for a call with the state department,” Lucy says, taking a couple of steps forward until she’s within Kate’s reach. “I should go.”
“I’m sorry!”
Kate sobs it, even though she knows she’s making things worse. Lucy sighs. She takes another step closer, reaching out to squeeze Kate’s forearm.
“I know you are.”
Lucy lets the quiet settle. It’s not unbearable, but it’s not comfortable either. It’s weighty—heavy in a way it hasn’t been between them in a long time.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Lucy finally asks, eyeing Kate up and down. Her thumb brushes along the delicate bones of Kate’s wrist. “Your presentation isn’t for a couple of hours.”
For a second, Kate thinks about asking Lucy to stay. She didn’t say Tennant needed her immediately. But Kate can see the way Lucy is keeping one eye on the door, desperate to flee, and she loses her nerve. Maybe a little space would be a good thing. Put a pin in the difficult conversation to give them both some time to find their bearings.
Kate sucks in a giant breath to get herself under control. Lucy won’t leave her like this. They’ve made it past that phase at least: the storming out and the silent treatment. Kate knows Lucy won’t leave her in pieces anymore. But that thought sets off another wave of humiliation because what does Lucy know now, about her? What could she possibly take away from this betrayal that looks anything like growth? Like a future together? Like the things Kate professed to want?
But that line of thinking only rattles at the boulder in Kate’s chest, shaking loose little pebbles of grief that threaten to get the landslide going again, so Kate bites down hard on the inside of her cheek. She pulls out of Lucy’s grasp, concentrating on drawing another few shaky breaths in and out. Lucy stays close but doesn’t bridge the gap.
“I’m fine,” Kate says, motioning her off. “Lucy, go. I’m good.”
Lucy gives her a dubious look but starts for the door. She turns just before she leaves the bedroom. Her face is strained, full of too many emotions to name. Lucy opens her mouth, and Kate’s heart skips a beat. But then Lucy blinks, and the look is gone.
“Eat your lunch before it gets cold,” Lucy ends up saying, pointing to the nightstand where the take-out bag sits atop the open nightstand drawer. “It smells good.”
“I will,” Kate says, eager to give Lucy something. “We’ll talk later?”
She tries to keep her voice light, not letting it get bogged down by everything she feels: hope, desperation, fear, and a love almost too great to bear. She’s not sure what she expects, but Lucy moves right past it.
“Good luck today.”
Lucy is long gone when Kate can finally move or speak. The food does smell delicious, but Kate knows she won’t be able to eat any of it. She empties her portion into a grocery bag, and then walks it down the hall to the trash chute. It feels good to move her body. Maybe she’ll go for a quick walk on the sand before she has to leave for her presentation. First, she’ll put the empty takeout container in the trash for Lucy to see, so she doesn’t think her thoughtfulness was in vain.
When Kate gets back to their apartment she stands in the entryway for a minute, trying to remember what she was going to do. Lucy’s gray jacket is hanging on a hook. Kate runs her fingers along the collar, leaning close to catch the lingering scent of her girlfriend.
“Be safe,” Kate whispers to the empty room.