Page 75 of Dr. Roz Harrington
They watched the sky open as if it had changed its mind about being sullen. Light climbed every surface until it found them too, brushed over Sam’s cheekbones, struck sparks in Roz’s eyes. In the quiet, their breath seemed louder than the city. Coffee steamed between their palms.
“You slept,” Roz said after a while, gentle surprise threaded through her tone. “Through. No calls. No nightmares.”
Sam made a small sound. “You wrapped me up like contraband and told me I wasn’t allowed to worry.”
“I said you were not allowed tocarry.” Roz set her mug on the railing and turned, bracing one hand beside Sam’s hip. Up close, she could see the pillow-crease faint along Sam’s jaw, thesoftness at the corners of her mouth that meant the day hadn’t sharpened her yet. “You can worry all you like, Princess. I’ll take it and file it alphabetically.”
Sam’s eyes warmed. “Under ‘H’ for Harrington?”
“Under ‘O’ foroverzealous.”
Sam’s laugh faded into something quieter. “You always know what to say.”
“No,” Roz said, honest as bone. “I just refuse to leave the room while I look for it.”
Sam stared at her for a long moment—the unrushed kind, where the gaze itself felt like touch. Roz felt the old impulse to straighten her spine, to armor her words with cleverness. It didn’t come. It hadn’t, in a long time.
Sam shifted her mug to one hand and held out the other. Roz laced their fingers together without hesitation, palm to palm, a fit made familiar by practice. Sam’s thumb skated over the ridge of Roz’s first knuckle—a tiny, thoughtless movement that still undid her.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sam said, soft.
“Dangerous,” Roz murmured, but the smile tugging at her mouth betrayed her.
Sam ignored it. “About that night at the firehouse. You said you were done running.” Her throat worked. “I believe you.”
Roz felt the words land like a blessing and a commandment at once.
“And I know you can’t promise the world won’t…try us,” Sam went on. “But you keep choosing me in a hundred small ways. That’s…more than I knew to ask for.”
Roz leaned in, brushed their noses. “You taught me.”
Sam set her coffee aside, freed her other hand, and pulled Roz closer by the hem of her sleep-shirt. The kiss they shared in the cool dawn felt clean, unhurried—nothing to fix, nothing toprove, only the sweet recognition of two people who had become an answer for each other.
When they parted, Roz reached into the pocket of her cardigan. The movement was unassuming, almost shy, which would have shocked anyone who didn’t know her. She held out a length of silk—blush pink, the familiar ribbon that had begun as a secret and become something else entirely.
Sam’s mouth softened. “New one?”
Roz nodded. “I saw it yesterday and thought—” She cleared her throat. “I thought we were due for luck.”
Sam extended her wrist, the blanket slipping enough to bare warm skin and the faint ghost of yesterday’s watch mark. “Always.”
Roz tied the ribbon slowly, carefully, the way she did everything for Sam. The bow sat neat against the underside of her wrist. Roz bent and kissed the knot.
“For what it’s worth,” Sam said, voice low, “I don’t think it’s luck anymore.”
“What is it then?” Roz asked, still close enough to breathe her in.
“Practice.” Sam lifted her ribboned wrist and tapped the bow against Roz’s sternum, right over her heart. “Choosing each other when it would be easier to choose old habits.”
Roz rested her forehead to Sam’s. “You are very wise for a woman who leaves soot on my sheets.”
“You like me dirty.”
“I love you,” Roz corrected, the words simple and unadorned. They didn’t catch in her mouth as they once had; they went out easy and true, like breath. “I love you tidy. I love you unraveled. I love you when you steal my socks and when you bring home strays with aristocratic names. I love you when I’m brilliant. I love you when I’m wrong. I love you when you’re twenty minuteslate because you stopped to change someone’s tire and forgot to text me even though you promised you would?—”
Sam winced. “That was one time.”
Roz arched a brow. “Three.”
