And waited. And waited.
Just when he was wondering if he’d missed a pretty vital text, the door burst open and there she stood, wild-eyed and . . . brown-haired?
“I’m sorry,” she said, “sorry, sorry, sorry. I heard you, but I didn’t hear you.”
“That’s o—” She was already gone, whirling so fast, her black dress fluttered around her shins.
Zaf shut the door and watched her pace across the room, muttering to herself under her breath, her hands rubbing that newly dyed hair. There was a pile of books and paper in the middle of the floor and a small mountain of shoes by the desk that looked like they might have been thrown. The candles on her little goddess table were burning, surrounded by half-empty mugs of different-colored tea.
“So,” he said, “you seem perky.”
Dani ignored him.
“And obviously in a very healthy place right now.”
She ignored him harder. A passing bystander might claim she hadn’t done anything at all, but they would be wrong.
He sat on the arm of the sofa and said, “Want to talk about it?”
She turned to glare at him, which was progress. “You are profoundly annoying and extremely troublesome.”
“Good thing I have a big dick.”
There was a flicker of surprise, a hint of a smile. “Shut up.”
“Come here.” He caught her hand, pulled her closer. “Yesterday at lunch, you were fine. Now your hair is brown and your laptop is balanced upside down like a tent on your kitchen counter, all of which suggests you’re losing your shit. Want to tell me why?”
She raised a defensive hand to her curls. “It’s not brown! It’s very dark blue.”
“Danika. I’ve seen your hair blue. That’s brown.”
She folded her arms over her chest and made a strangled, jerky sound, kind of like a frustrated kitten. “Well, maybe it is! Maybe I need to look as ordinary as possible to make up for the fact that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“There has not ever,” Zaf said mildly, “been a time when you didn’t know what you were doing. Including your actual birth. I’m pretty sure about that.”
“I just—after you left, I may or may not have had a rather unpleasant nightmare, in which I made a complete fool of myself in front of Inez Holly”—it was always Inez Holly, Zaf had learned, and never Professor Holly or Inez—“and she gave me a look of chilling disdain midpanel in front of everyone—”
“Danika,” Zaf began.
“And then she got me thrown off my Ph.D. for being so utterly useless—”
“Sweetheart, come on. She doesn’t even work at our—”
“And then she called someone who knew someone, and they somehow stripped me of my master’s, which—”
He caught Dani’s face in his hands, held her gaze with his. “Which is not ever going to happen. Do you know who you sound like right now?”
She scowled at him, but she didn’t pull away. “No,” she muttered. “Who?”
“Me,” he said softly. “You sound anxious, you sound under pressure, you sound like me. Happens to the best of us. So we’re going to try something, okay?”
He saw her throat bob as she swallowed. He waited for a sarcastic comment, for a deflection, but one didn’t come. Instead, she said quietly, “Okay. What?”
“We’re going to breathe together.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And by that you mean . . .”
He laughed. “Just trust me, okay?”
“I do,” she said, and those two little words all but knocked him out.
Slowly, he drew her into a hug. Zaf knew, logically, that Danika wasn’t a small woman—actually, that was one of the things he liked about her. But sometimes, she really felt small. Like right now, when the tension leaked out of her, drop by drop, and she relaxed slowly into his arms. Zaf kissed the top of her head, then pressed his nose into her hair and breathed deeply. Once, twice, as many times as it took, until her breathing slowed, too, and they were in calm, steady synch.
It was good, doing this for someone—with someone—instead of just himself. Perfect, doing it for Danika. Time seemed to slow, or dissolve, or disappear, and his heart rate sank so low he was either totally at peace or a little bit dead.
Eventually, she tipped her head back to look at him. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“Anytime.” Seriously, anytime. All the time. Forever. Just say the word. Holy shit, please say the word before I die.
Instead of reading his mind, she took a breath and raised a hand to her own chest. He knew she was touching the gemstones beneath her dress, reminding herself what each one meant to her. Finally she murmured, “I can’t keep doing this.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Breathing?”
Danika’s glare, as always, was a thing of beauty and impressive venom. “This,” she repeated. “Fixating on my goals, pouring all my energy into my work until there’s nothing left.” She faltered, swallowed hard, and Zaf’s heart squeezed. He tried to remember if he’d ever heard Dani address the obsessive way she worked, and came up blank. There’d be a self-conscious joke here, a wry comment there—but the way she was looking at him now, solemn and serious, was different. This was different.
He held her closer, kissed her temple, and waited.
“I don’t let anyone else do the things you do for me,” she said. The words rushed out, all jumbled together, her awkwardness as obvious as it was adorable. “I don’t let anyone feed me or force me to take breaks or drag me outside to see the sun. And lately I’ve been thinking—what did I do
