Zoey knocked on his door on Saturday morning, before she'd fully finished convincing herself it was a good idea, holding nothing — no bakery bag, no borrowed tool, no plausible cover story of any kind. Just herself, and the accumulated weight of a week's worth of unfinished sentences.
Leo opened the door looking faintly surprised, hair unstyled, a smear of something pale on his forearm that suggested he'd been working already, early as it was.
"Hey," Zoey said, and then, because she'd promised herself on the walk over that she wouldn't retreat into a cover story this time, added, "I don't actually have a reason for this. I just wanted to see you."
Something in Leo's face opened up, slow and warm, like a door easing wider on its hinges. "Yeah?" he said, quietly.
"Yeah," Zoey confirmed, and stepped inside when he pulled the door back to let her in, feeling lighter already, having said even that much out loud.
His workbench was cluttered in the particular way it got when he was deep in a project, tools scattered, half-finished figures propped in various states of completion, and Zoey found her eyes drawn, almost immediately, to something new on the shelf beside the rabbit with the magnifying glass — a small clay hedgehog, spines carefully individuated, tiny and fierce-looking, its front paws wrapped tenderly around an oversized strawberry nearly as big as its whole body.
"Is that—" Zoey started, already half-laughing, already knowing the answer before she finished the question.
"Don't," Leo said, though he was laughing too, color rising in his cheeks. "I know how it looks."
"It's me being scary and sweet at the same time," Zoey said, delighted despite herself, picking the figure up to examine the careful detail of the spines, the improbable tenderness of the tiny clay paws around the fruit. "This is so specific."
"You yelled at a guy in line at the grocery store last week for cutting in front of an old woman," Leo said, in his own defense. "Then you helped her carry her bags to her car and asked if she needed anything else. I watched the whole thing from the window. It felt like it needed to be commemorated."
Zoey looked at the hedgehog again, something in her chest going soft and unsteady at the specificity of it — not some generic sweetness Leo had projected onto her, but an actual moment, actually witnessed, actually understood for what it was: prickly on the outside, soft underneath, exactly the contradiction she'd spent years trying to hide behind thriller plots and suspicious notebooks.
"I like this one even more than the rabbit," she said, quietly.
"Yeah?" Leo asked, watching her with the same careful hope he'd shown when she'd found the first figure.
"Yeah." She set it back down gently, positioning it exactly where she'd found it, the way she had with the rabbit weeks ago. "It's the truest one, I think."
They stood there a moment, close together at the workbench, the easy warmth of the room settling around them, and Zoey found the words she'd been avoiding for a week rising up, finally, without the usual panic attached.
"I got scared," she said, quietly. "After the party. After you said you'd wait. I didn't run because I didn't want it — I ran because I did, more than I've wanted anything in a long time, and that scared me more than any of the stuff I used to think about you."
Leo went very still, watching her with an intensity that made her want to look away and made her stay looking anyway.
"I'm not him," Leo said, quietly, no need to specify who he meant. "Whatever he did to make you this careful — I'm not going to do that. I don't know how to prove that to you except by just... being here. As long as it takes."
"I know," Zoey said, and found, saying it out loud, that she actually did know it, had known it for a while now, underneath all the running. "I think I've known for a while. I just needed to catch up to it."
"Have you?" Leo asked, softly. "Caught up?"
Zoey looked at the little clay hedgehog on the shelf, spines fierce, paws wrapped soft and careful around something sweet, and felt something in her chest settle into place with a clarity that had nothing to do with evidence or case files or any theory she'd ever constructed.
"Getting there," she said, echoing his own words back to him from weeks ago, and watched the smile that broke across his face in response — unguarded, delighted, entirely undefended — and thought, standing there in his cluttered, clay-dusted workshop, that she had never in her life felt less like running from anything.
You've reached the end of this chapter
Zoey knocked on his door on Saturday morning, before she'd fully finished convincing herself it was a good idea, holding nothing — no bakery bag, no borrowed tool, no plausible cover story of any kind. Just herself, and the accumulated weight of a week's worth of unfinished sentences.
Leo opened the door looking faintly surprised, hair unstyled, a smear of something pale on his forearm that suggested he'd been working already, early as it was.
"Hey," Zoey said, and then, because she'd promised herself on the walk over that she wouldn't retreat into a cover story this time, added, "I don't actually have a reason for this. I just wanted to see you."
Something in Leo's face opened up, slow and warm, like a door easing wider on its hinges. "Yeah?" he said, quietly.
"Yeah," Zoey confirmed, and stepped inside when he pulled the door back to let her in, feeling lighter already, having said even that much out loud.
His workbench was cluttered in the particular way it got when he was deep in a project, tools scattered, half-finished figures propped in various states of completion, and Zoey found her eyes drawn, almost immediately, to something new on the shelf beside the rabbit with the magnifying glass — a small clay hedgehog, spines carefully individuated, tiny and fierce-looking, its front paws wrapped tenderly around an oversized strawberry nearly as big as its whole body.
"Is that—" Zoey started, already half-laughing, already knowing the answer before she finished the question.
"Don't," Leo said, though he was laughing too, color rising in his cheeks. "I know how it looks."
"It's me being scary and sweet at the same time," Zoey said, delighted despite herself, picking the figure up to examine the careful detail of the spines, the improbable tenderness of the tiny clay paws around the fruit. "This is so specific."
"You yelled at a guy in line at the grocery store last week for cutting in front of an old woman," Leo said, in his own defense. "Then you helped her carry her bags to her car and asked if she needed anything else. I watched the whole thing from the window. It felt like it needed to be commemorated."
Zoey looked at the hedgehog again, something in her chest going soft and unsteady at the specificity of it — not some generic sweetness Leo had projected onto her, but an actual moment, actually witnessed, actually understood for what it was: prickly on the outside, soft underneath, exactly the contradiction she'd spent years trying to hide behind thriller plots and suspicious notebooks.
"I like this one even more than the rabbit," she said, quietly.
"Yeah?" Leo asked, watching her with the same careful hope he'd shown when she'd found the first figure.
"Yeah." She set it back down gently, positioning it exactly where she'd found it, the way she had with the rabbit weeks ago. "It's the truest one, I think."
They stood there a moment, close together at the workbench, the easy warmth of the room settling around them, and Zoey found the words she'd been avoiding for a week rising up, finally, without the usual panic attached.
"I got scared," she said, quietly. "After the party. After you said you'd wait. I didn't run because I didn't want it — I ran because I did, more than I've wanted anything in a long time, and that scared me more than any of the stuff I used to think about you."
Leo went very still, watching her with an intensity that made her want to look away and made her stay looking anyway.
"I'm not him," Leo said, quietly, no need to specify who he meant. "Whatever he did to make you this careful — I'm not going to do that. I don't know how to prove that to you except by just... being here. As long as it takes."
"I know," Zoey said, and found, saying it out loud, that she actually did know it, had known it for a while now, underneath all the running. "I think I've known for a while. I just needed to catch up to it."
"Have you?" Leo asked, softly. "Caught up?"
Zoey looked at the little clay hedgehog on the shelf, spines fierce, paws wrapped soft and careful around something sweet, and felt something in her chest settle into place with a clarity that had nothing to do with evidence or case files or any theory she'd ever constructed.
"Getting there," she said, echoing his own words back to him from weeks ago, and watched the smile that broke across his face in response — unguarded, delighted, entirely undefended — and thought, standing there in his cluttered, clay-dusted workshop, that she had never in her life felt less like running from anything.
You've reached the end of this chapter