Page 73 of Between the Lines

We don’t speak. Words don’t belong in this place with so many questions and not enough answers, so many emotions and not enough windows open to air them all out. It’s me and Nathan and a magnitude of relief that somehow doesn’t quell the aching in my chest that he was about to do this alone.

His parents are dead and he cared for his brother alone, and that brother also had cancer?

What more has this man been carrying alone?

I hold him. This quiet, serious man, whose edges don’t seem to align anywhere, fits perfectly into the palm of my hands, perfectly into the angles of my body. I don’t know why or how, but in all the ways that it matters, I have molded to him in this time of need and I’m not letting him go. I run my fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp until he purrs. His arms are dead weights between us, though the way they twitch, I wonder if he’s longing to wrap himself around me too.

Eventually, his stomach growls. My fingers still, my hands sinking to his shoulder to squeeze before I cup his chin, tilting it to lift his gaze to mine like he’s done so often for me.

Redirected me to his center. Reminded me that I am valued.

Distress and relief exist in his eyes, lassoed by exhaustion in the heavy blink that begsplease don’t pity me.

“How does homemade grilled cheese sound tonight?”

A crease forms between his brows, and I trace my thumb over it, dispelling any doubt with my fingerprints.

“I have to admit though, my tomato soup is definitely Campbell’s.”

I smile. Small, but bright. His eyebrows pinch up in gratitude so tender, I’m afraid if I make one more joke about soup, he might shatter.

I place a grocery order for the ingredients we need, and wait ten minutes in the parking lot to head to Nathan’s. When I arrive, he disappears to his bedroom after letting me in, and I put on a pot of tea. The way I’m becoming familiarin his spaceshould have my nerves on end, but it doesn’t.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the anxiety I have about inviting someone new into a place where I don’t have room to ramp up. It’ll have me halfway across town before he can return from changing into the joggers I’m also becoming used to. Instead, I get out the necessary pots and pans, along with a few spices that I know he has hiding in his lazy Susan. Nathan still hasn’t emerged after theDasher drops off the groceries, so I prep our sandwiches and wander down the hall.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I want to make sure he’s okay. On the other, he just received clearance of his brother’scancer,and for the first time, a stone of anxiety settles in the bottom of my stomach.

Did he want to be left alone?

I invited myself here.

I’m invading his personal space, with a very personal topic, and now he has no idea how to politely tell the freakingsubstitute teacherto get out of his house?—

“Claire?”

When I blink back into focus, I’m standing at the top of the stairs, somewhere in his house I haven’t yet been, and Nathan is eyeing me cautiously.

I’ve never seen him look so…young.

The scent of cedar and vanilla, along with the damp hair, tells me he’s just showered. He has traded his work attire in for a pair of black joggers and a plain white undershirt. He looks so soft. So handsome. I want to cuddle up behind him and hold him until every worry he has melts away.

“Sorry. I was just checking on you. If you want me to leave?—”

He closes the feet of space between us, cutting me off with his arms around my waist, his forehead resting in the space where my shoulder and neck meet.

“No.”

Nathan is a man of few words. This one somehow weighs a ton and carries off all of my nerves at once.

“Grilled cheese?”

It’s mumbled into my neck, and the way he says it is just so…un-Nathan-like. I’m immediately met with flashes of a sick little boy who had to stay home from school. The caregiver in me warms.

“Why don’t you hang out in the study with some tea while I cook? It’ll only be about ten minutes.”

He does come to the kitchen for his mug of tea. Hedoesn’ttake it to the study. He perches on a stool and watches me, silently, while I work. I’d thought that something about Nathan had changed in the last hour, but as I warm a can of Campbell’s tomato soup on the stovetop, I realize that nothing about him has changed.

It’s his walls that have shifted. This Nathan, the soft, relaxed, yet exhausted man sitting at the kitchen island has been in him the entire time. This is simply the first time that he has let me in this deep. As I slide a warm sandwich and bowl of soup to the place setting in front of him, he opens that crevice a little wider.

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