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“You helped me out there today with the dog. You could have waited, but you didn’t.”

“Something coulda happened to you.”

“So you pushed yourself when you thought you couldn’t, and it worked out. I just wish I hadn’t done so much pushing before. There isn’t a time limit on any of this. You don’t need to follow some weird plan I read in a library once.”

“No,” he says, quickly. “It wasn’t that. Wasn’t you. I wanna keep trying.”

“You do?”

She said she wants to hug him again and there’s nothing in this world he wants more than to feel her flush against him, too.

He may as well be asking to hug a unicorn for how impossible it seems, but she’s convinced he can do it, and he doesn’t want to disappoint her.

There’s only a slim chance he’ll actually get his shit together enough to succeed.

“Really.” He nods. “I do.”

Her smile is almost shy in a way he hasn’t seen before. “Okay. Good, that’s good. Whenever you feel like you want to touch me, you can. You’ve got full permission, okay? Anytime. Anywhere. You don’t have to ask. Just make sure I know it’s coming, so I don’t startle out of surprise.”

He raises a brow. She can’t help but make everything sound like a flirt, even when it’s not. “Anywhere?”

Her blush is a point in his corner and damn if that doesn’t feel like a victory.

Weird that it happened now, when he’s the worst version of himself, and even forcing out that single word was a challenge.

Maybe he could have had her blushing every day if he had tried when he was still relatively sane.

“I said what I said,” she replies, holding his stare.

Her teasing ain’t nothing new. It doesn’t mean anything else and he won’t read into it. Funny how he was always ready with a one-liner or a flirt for any woman to cross his path who wasn’t her, and she was the one poking at him back then until his ears went red.

“Can I cook you dinner tonight?” he asks, unable to keep from fidgeting his fingers against his pant leg.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. I need to. I gotta feel like I’m being productive, you know? So lemme make you dinner. Please.”

“I’d like that very much.”

She smiles like every woman he’s ever seen in a movie who’s been asked on a date. That’s not what this is. Obviously. She doesn’t love him like that, even if he knows on some level she must love him to go through what she has to save him.

He can make her dinner, though. Do something nice for her after she’s done so much for him. Judging by the way she can’t stop smiling, it’s the first good idea he’s had.

* * *

Spaghetti is on the menu. They don’t have sauce but they do have tomatoes. Kara waits with her legs crossed in a kitchen chair, flipping through an old magazine peddling products from a long-lost world.

It almost feels domestic. Like this could be a thing they do all the time just because they want to, not because they’re stuck here.

At least until the sound of the skillet hits him in the worst way, far too close to the sizzle of a hot knife against his flesh.

His thigh throbs where another scar was seared into him.

He rubs it absently, letting his hand drift to caress the bracelet.

It’s not a frenzied attempt this time, but an unconscious gesture that reminds him he’s here with Kara.

In the blue house with dinner on the stove, a dog by the fireplace, and freedom to go where he pleases.

“I think it’s done,” she says quietly.

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Right.”

He’s making pasta. It’s a normal, everyday situation. He’s capable of being present instead of wallowing in the past. If he says that enough in his head, maybe he’ll start believing it.

The scent of food has the dog hobbling into the room with his nose wiggling a mile a minute in a welcome distraction.

“We’ve got a guest,” he says.

“Looks like it. Do dogs like pasta?”

“Dogs lick their own assholes. Pasta is a gourmet option.”

She laughs. “Good point.”

He makes food for all three of them. They’ll need a few squirrels for the dog soon, but for now, this will have to do. His offering is inhaled off a plate within seconds and then the dog is gone, wandering toward the fire as if they’re useless now that he’s been fed.

“Okay, you’re welcome,” Kara calls out with a smile.

That little flower catches his eye again as he joins her at the table. “You got something…”

She only tilts her head when he points to it.

He said he wanted to keep trying, and this is as good a time as any. It’s not as difficult as he expects to pluck it gently from behind her ear. He goes slowly, and she waits patiently. Gives him those easy cat-like blinks that are more comforting than they have any right to be.

His fingers brush strands of dark hair as he pulls back, and while it’s not a full touch, it’s the closest he’s come while facing her.

“You always wanted a dog but you never got one,” she says absently.

“No. It just felt like setting myself up for the worst.”

“How do you mean?”

“No secret how it’s gonna end. Same way every time.”

She frowns. “That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth it.”

“Maybe. I had a little mouse in the cell. He’d sit in my hand every day,” he winces. “That’s weird, right? I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“Animals are the best judges of character. It doesn’t surprise me that you were Cinderella for a while.”

He snorts, almost choking on his pasta at her joke, but the levity doesn’t last. “Not a good person, though. I’ve done things.”

“We’ve all done things, Wade. Whatever happened there, you did what you had to do to survive.”

He remembers the lives he took just to keep himself breathing because the only other option was to be on the wrong end of a weapon. How entertainment before they started moving every other week was putting prisoners in the pit to see who would make it out alive.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks softly. “I’ll listen.”

“No. Maybe someday, but not now.”

“Okay.”

“So this touching thing, is there some kinda number to aim for? What did the book say? Once a day? Ten times a day?”

She smiles. “As much as you want, but it’s good to start slow.”

“Once a day, then. Maybe twice, because the flower felt like it counted, but it’s early still and I want to try again later.”

“That sounds like a plan to me.”

“If you get sick of me trying to paw at you, just tell me to stop and I will.”

“I won’t get sick of it. It’s all I’ve wanted for six years.”

It’s all he’s wanted, too. All he dreamed of, all he soothed himself with during his worst moments. Now, he has her right here, willing to let him touch her however he pleases. He was easily overwhelmed just lacing their fingers together earlier. What comes next might be his complete undoing.