Her hand fell from his wrist. The absence of his warmth against her fingers was immediate, a cold rush in the space where he'd been. She dropped her arm to her side, and her thumb found the ridge of her wedding band, rotating it once, twice, a nervous habit worn smooth over two years. The fluorescent hum buzzed overhead, a sound she hadn't noticed until this moment, filling the silence with its flat insistence.
Ethan didn't move. His boots were planted on the concrete, his weight settled like he was bracing for a shift in the floor. His hazel eyes held hers without blinking. He wasn't going to help her find a safe word. He'd already given her the out, and she'd called him back. Now he was waiting to see what she'd do with it.
The sawdust smell hung in the air—dry, clean, familiar. She'd visited this hardware store a dozen times since moving back, always on weekends when the aisles were emptier, always grabbing the same brand of paint. She'd never seen him here. She'd never let herself wonder if he still lived close enough to cross paths. Now she was standing in the middle of it, and the entire store felt like it was holding its breath.
"You build furniture now." The words came out before she could stop them—a deflection, a door she could walk through if he let her. "The sawdust. You always smelled like it after shop class."
He almost smiled. Almost. A flicker at the corner of his mouth that died before it reached his eyes. "I do. Tables, mostly. And shelves." He paused. "You were always better at the design part."
There it was. A reference to the senior project they'd worked on together—her sketches, his hands. She'd drawn the lines; he'd cut the wood. They'd finished it two weeks before the hallway, before the kiss, before she'd walked away. The project had earned an A. The project was still sitting in her parents' garage, because she couldn't bring herself to throw it away, couldn't bring herself to look at it.
"It's still in my parents' garage," she said. Her voice was quieter than she'd meant it to be. "The bookshelf we built."
His jaw tightened. He didn't ask why. He didn't ask anything. He just let the information settle in the air between them, a piece of evidence laid bare. She was still holding it. She'd been holding it for a decade.
She pressed her palm flat against her chest, over the spot where her heartbeat pushed against her ribs. The ring's metal bit into her skin through the fabric of her blouse. "I don't know what I'm doing here," she said. "I don't know what I came here to find."
"You came back to town." His voice was low, careful, like he was testing each word before he let it land. "You picked this aisle. And you called my name when I walked away."
The truth cracked along a fault line she'd been ignoring for years. She felt it split, a hair-thin fissure running from her chest up to her throat. She opened her mouth to say something safe—something about being in town for work, about the paint being for the guest room, about needing to get back to her car before the parking meter ran out. But his eyes held hers, steady, unflinching, and the safe words died on her tongue.
"I still dream about your hand on my wrist," she said. The words scraped past the crack, raw and unfinished. "In the hallway. The way you touched me before I—" She stopped. The hum filled the space where the rest of the sentence should have been.
The hum filled the space where the rest of the sentence should have been. She felt it pressing against her teeth, the word she'd swallowed ten years ago, the one that had lodged in her throat every time she'd woken from the dream—his thumb pressed to the inside of her wrist, her pulse hammering against his skin, and then the weight of her own feet carrying her away.
"Before I walked away," she finished. The words came out thin, scraped clean of everything but the truth. "Before I turned and walked down those stairs and never looked back. That's what I dream about. Not the kiss. Your hand on my wrist. Like you were trying to hold me there without holding me."
Ethan's jaw tightened. The muscle in his cheek jumped once, twice, then stilled. He didn't speak. He didn't move. But something shifted in his eyes—a crack in the steady warmth, a flicker of the same fault line she felt opening in her own chest.
She pressed her palm flat against her sternum. The ring bit into her skin through the fabric of her blouse, a small, sharp pressure she couldn't ignore. "I've told myself a thousand different versions of why I left. That it was too much. That we were too young. That I wasn't ready." She let out a breath that tasted like dust. "But the real reason is simpler. I was scared of what would happen if I stayed."
"And now?" His voice was low, rough at the edges, like he'd been holding the word in his throat for a decade.
She looked down at her hand—the ring catching the fluorescent light, the metal warm against her finger. She thought about Mark, about the breakfast table they'd shared that morning, about the way he'd kissed her cheek before she left for the store. Kind. Steady. Safe. Nothing like the man standing two feet away from her, waiting for an answer she didn't know how to give.
"Now I'm standing in a hardware store aisle," she said, "and I still don't know how to finish the sentence."
He took a step closer. Just one. The toe of his boot brushed against the concrete where her shadow fell. Close enough that she could see the sawdust caught in the fabric of his flannel, the calluses on his hands where they hung at his sides, the way his chest rose and fell with a breath he was trying to steady.
"Then let me help you finish it," he said. His hand moved—slow, deliberate, giving her every chance to step back. His fingers found hers, not interlacing, just resting against the side of her palm, a question more than a claim. "Tell me what you want, Clara. Not what you think you should want. Not what's safe. What you actually want."
Her breath caught. Not the dramatic gasp of a novel—just a small hitch, a stutter in the rhythm of her lungs. She looked down at his hand, at the way his calluses brushed against the smooth skin of her knuckles, and she felt the fault line in her chest widen, deepen, split clean through.
"I want to know what would have happened," she whispered. "If I hadn't walked away. If I'd stayed in that hallway and let you—" She stopped again, but this time the sentence didn't die. It hung in the air between them, unfinished but no longer empty, waiting for him to fill it.