Noah Bennett had chili on the stove and water still in his hair and absolutely nothing going on inside his chest except the quiet certainty that he was doing everything right.

  The chili was simmering with that patient, stubborn sound food made when it was determined to become comforting whether you deserved it or not. Tomato, cumin, slow heat. The smell filled his apartment, warm and familiar, like a memory he’d been trying not to think about.

  He made a stupid amount, because making less would have meant naming the thing he wasn’t naming.

  Noah stood at the counter, towel around his neck, damp hair pushed back with one hand. He’d showered the moment he got home because he needed something to reset, something to mark the end of a day in which Rachel Ellis had been five feet away and utterly unreachable.

  He stirred the chili mechanically, watching the surface shift and settle.

  It didn’t matter, he insisted to himself. He could switch programs. He could make it easier. He could—

  There was a heavy knock at the door that made him flinch.

  It wasn't a polite knock. It was three hard, decisive raps against the wood.

  His heart kicked once—hard—then started racing like it had somewhere to be.

  Noah set the spoon down carefully and walked to the door on legs that felt faintly unreliable.

  He opened it.

  Rachel stood there.

  She looked unraveled in the specific way a person looks when they have been holding themselves together with office supplies and willpower for too long. Her blazer was gone. The top button of her blouse was undone, not casually, but like she’d needed air. Her hair had escaped whatever clip had been holding it, strands loose around her face.

  But her eyes were sharp.

  “Hi,” she said. Her voice was tight.

  “Hi,” Noah managed.

  Rachel didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped inside, kicking her shoes off by the door with a kind of aggressive efficiency, and turned to face him before he’d even closed it.

  “Why did you take the stairs?” she asked.

  Noah blinked, his brain still trying to catch up to the fact that she was in his hallway. “What?”

  “The stairs,” Rachel repeated. Her hands were curled into fists at her sides. “I saw you. You walked in. You saw me. And then you walked away and climbed three flights of stairs.”

  Noah’s throat tightened. “You were getting home from work," he began, finding it a bit difficult to give a rationale for what was mostly instinct. "I figured you’d want the elevator to yourself.”

  “I don’t want the elevator to myself!” Rachel snapped, and the volume of it startled them both. “I don’t want you to—to erase yourself just because it’s easier for me.”

  Noah stared at her. He had expected her to be tired. He had expected her to be distant. He hadn’t expected her to be furious on his behalf.

  “I was trying to be polite,” Noah said, baffled.

  “You weren’t being polite,” Rachel snapped, the shake in her voice only making it sharper. “You were disappearing. Like you’ve been trained to. Like it’s normal for you to remove yourself before anyone has to ask.”

  Noah went very still.

  He didn’t know how to answer, because it was normal. It was the safest kind of normal he knew.

  “Rachel,” he said gently.

  “Don’t,” she said, and the anger drained out of it mid-syllable, leaving something raw. “Don’t use that voice—the one that makes it sound like you’re fine with being… less.” Her breath shuddered in. “I hate that voice.”

  Noah closed his mouth.

  Rachel stood there, chest heaving slightly, staring at him with eyes that were bright with frustration and exhaustion and something that looked terrifyingly like care.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, any remnants of her anger from earlier having gone as quickly as it had come, leaving her looking small.

  Noah’s fingers tightened against his side.

  He didn’t know what to do with apologies. He’d been collecting them his whole life and had never found a way to spend them.

  He looked at her—pale, shaking, obviously running on fumes—and his instincts took over. The part of him that knew how to survive by being useful.

  “You look hungry,” he said.

  Rachel blinked, thrown off track. “What?”

  “You look hungry,” Noah repeated. He gestured toward the kitchen. “I made chili.”

  Rachel stared at him. She looked like she wanted to keep going, like she wanted to make him understand whatever point she was trying to drive home. But then the smell of cumin and tomato hit her, and her stomach made a traitorous, audible sound.

  Rachel’s face flushed pink.

  Noah turned and walked into the kitchen. “Sit down,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll get a bowl.”

  He heard her hesitate. Then he heard the scrape of a chair.

  Noah breathed out, long and slow.

  He served the chili the way he did everything: bowls steaming, spoons placed exactly so, napkins squared. He didn’t know why he was still trying to make things pleasant when everything felt cracked.

  Maybe because he didn’t know how to stop.

  He brought the bowls to the table and sat opposite her.

  They ate in silence for the first few minutes.

  Rachel took a bite, then another. Her shoulders dropped a fraction with every spoonful, the reflexive relief of warm food doing what warm food did. She ate like someone who hadn’t realized she was starving until the option to stop was removed.

  “It’s good,” she said softly, staring at the bowl.

  Noah nodded. “It’s… chili.”

  Rachel’s mouth curved slightly—a ghost of a smile. “You’re allowed to take the compliment.”

  Noah glanced up. The hint of her old tone loosened something in him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

  They finished eating in quieter company. The chili warmed them in the simplest way, anchored the evening to something mundane.

  When the bowls were nearly empty, Rachel pushed hers away. She looked better. The color had come back to her cheeks. The frantic energy had settled into something heavier, but steadier.

  “I shouldn’t have yelled,” she said, looking at the table.

  Noah shrugged one shoulder. “I shouldn’t have taken the stairs.”

  Rachel looked up at him. Her gaze was intense again. “Why did you?”

  Noah opened his mouth to give a polite answer, then stopped. He looked at the woman who had just stormed into his apartment because she hated seeing him diminish himself.

  “It’s simpler to remove the problem when you are the problem,” Noah admitted with a small, helpless shrug.

  Rachel flinched. She didn’t look away. She just looked at him like he'd said something that shouldn't be allowed to be true.

  "You're not a problem, Noah,” she whispered. "Don't... Don't talk about yourself like that."

  Noah exhaled through his nose, like the sentences were too big to hold. "I didn't want to trap you in an elevator. It's just what I do when I'm not sure what's allowed."

  Rachel’s expression shifted—anger, then grief, then resolve. “You’re allowed,” she said, softly. Then again, firmer: "You're allowed."

  Not knowing how to respond to the words that landed beneath his sternum with a thud, he simply said, "Okay."

  Rachel closed her eyes for a second. A moment passed. “I hate the stairs.”

  Noah let out a soft, surprised laugh. “Me too. My knees hurt.”

  Rachel’s eyes flew open and she huffed a laugh—wet and startled. “You’re eighteen,” she said, and the number hung in the air, sharp and real. “Your knees do not hurt.”

  “It was three flights,” Noah defended, smiling faintly. “And I was carrying bags.”

  The air between them shifted. It wasn’t fixed. But the terrifying distance was diminishing.

  Rachel stood up. “I’ll help,” she said, reaching for the bowls.

  Noah started to refuse out of habit. No, I got it, sit down, relax. Then he stopped himself. Habit was, apparently, a big part of the problem.

  So he nodded. “Okay.”

  They carried things into the kitchen together. Rachel moved like she’d been there before. She knew where the dish soap was. She knew he liked the sponge rinsed before it touched anything. She knew he stacked dishes in a specific order—because he’d once joked that the dishwasher was a moral test and she’d apparently taken notes.

  Noah watched her do it and felt something deep in his chest shift painfully.

  Rachel turned on the water. “I’ll wash,” she said, rolling up her sleeves.

  Noah nodded. “I’ll dry.”

  They worked in silence for a minute, the sound of water and clinking ceramic filling the space.

  Rachel handed him a bowl.

  Their fingers brushed. A small, accidental contact—warm, familiar.

  Their fingers brushed. They both went still for half a beat, then kept moving—slower now, like the contact had changed the air.

  Rachel handed him the next dish, more carefully.

  Their fingers touched again anyway.

  Sustained for a fraction longer than necessary, because the dish was wet and needed a secure transfer, because their bodies were stupid, because the air between them had grown thin.

  Noah’s throat tightened. Rachel’s breath changed—small, audible. Noah set the dish on the towel and looked up.

  Rachel was facing the sink, but her head had turned slightly toward him, eyes lowered, mouth pressed into a line like she was trying not to show too much.

  Noah’s hands hovered over the towel, suddenly useless.

  Rachel turned off the water.

  The kitchen went quiet.

  They were left standing there, close enough that Noah could feel the heat of her body beside him, facing each other in the space between the counter and the drying rack.

  Rachel lifted her eyes to his face.

  “I missed you,” she said. It wasn’t a fix. It wasn’t a solution to the ethics board or the age gap or the department rules.

  It was just a fact.

  Noah felt his defenses—the stairs, the silence, the politeness—crumble like wet paper.

  “I missed you too,” he said.

  He watched her pupils dilate. He watched the way her eyes flicked to his lips, waiting.

  And Noah knew that if nothing changed in the next five seconds, they were going to lose the war they’d been fighting for two weeks.