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“Why do you doubt yourself?” he asked.

“Don’t you?”

He was looking straight at me.

“Every second of the day. But that’s just the way it is. I doubt my feelings. I doubt my future. I wake up every morning screaming because my kids are no longer here. I dream about them. I can hear them calling for me, and I wake up crying. That won’t ever stop. But the one thing I don’t doubt is that you’ll turn up with a cup of tea. And you have no idea how much that helps. That I’ve got you. You make the screaming stop, if only for a few hours.”

“I don’t want you to feel like that.”

“I will. It’s not something that will go away.”

“I get that. I miss my family every second of the day too.”

“So we’re just lonely?”

“Lonely and desperate,” I agreed with a smile.

“Pathetic, Stewart. You can do better than me.”

“I was thinking of asking Jean out for a drink,” I admitted with a wink. I was joking. He knew that.

“She’d love that. She calls you the silver fox.”

“I am a silver fox,” I said proudly. “Handsome. Got all my own teeth.”

“Good teeth here too.” He gave me a toothy grin. “Not sure about the sanity.”

“God, who needs sanity?”

“No one. It’s terribly overrated.”

“So…”

I didn’t know what I was asking.

“Yes?”

I felt like his hands belonged in mine. Like they were what had been missing. For a long, long time.

“Do you want to…come over for dinner? Give me an hour or two to whip something up, and then we can sit down and…perhaps—”

“Hang out?” he rescued me.

“Yes.”

He said he wasweak. Here I was, lying to his face. Because yes, hang out. But I wanted more. I wanted to try, I think, I wanted to touch him. Damn it.

“That sounds lovely,” he said. Then he reached over, inch by inch. The way he was looking at me… I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. My whole body was shaking as he gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

The disappointment on my face must have been devastating because he simply laughed.

“Oh, Stewart,” he said.

I couldn’t have said it better. Oh, Stewart, indeed.

15. Dylan

He looked so disappointed, and I was disappointed with myself, having built up all that courage only to have chickened out on…I didn’t even know what, but somehow, my hand had travelled up to his cheek. He’d not shaved for a couple of days again, building up a nice little bit of shade around his square jaw.