Page 32 of At First Dance
The wind picks up again, brushing hard against the windows like a warning.
“You came here because of the storm?” he asks.
I nod. My throat tightens. “They’ve triggered me before. The thunder. The flashes. I wasn’t… I didn’t want to be alone.”
His posture shifts—barely—but something about him softens. The space between us feels different now. Not smaller, exactly. Just… easier.
“I don’t expect anything,” I murmur. “I just needed somewhere that didn’t feel like a cage.”
He leans forward, forearms braced on his knees. “You’re not a burden.”
I blink. “What?”
“Not here.”
Simple words. But they hit me like a safety net I didn’t know I’d been falling toward.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
Another low rumble shakes the windows.
Rowan stands, collecting the plate.
“I can help—” I start, but he waves me off.
“Sit. You look like you’ve been walking uphill through molasses all day.”
I huff a laugh. “That’s disturbingly accurate.”
He chuckles under his breath, and something warm stirs in my chest. Something I don’t want to name.
I watch him rinse the dishes. He doesn’t need to fill the silence. He just… moves through it. Anchored. Intentional. Unbothered by the weight of not having to say everything out loud.
God help me, I don’t want to leave.
After a few minutes, Rowan returns with two mugs in hand.
“What’s this?” I ask as he passes one to me, the ceramic warm against my palms.
“Chamomile.” His tone is gruff. “Don’t get used to it. I’m not usually this hospitable.”
I smile into the steam. “Noted.”
We sit in the low golden light of the old lamp, the only illumination besides the occasional flicker from the stove pilot light behind us. Outside, the wind rattles a branch against the siding, a nervous tap that echoes in my chest. The air smells like impending rain and something subtler—cedar, maybe. Him.
“Rowan?” I say quietly.
He glances at me over the rim of his mug.
“I’m sorry for showing up like that. I know it was selfish.”
“It wasn’t.”
I pause. “It felt like it.”
“You were scared. You came to a place that felt safe. That’s not selfish. That’s survival.”
My throat tightens. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that—how badly I wanted someone to say it without hesitation, without asking for anything in return.
