"Wait here, wait here," Annie whispered, removing Auggie's hand from her arm and moving to close the church doors. Auggie shifted his weight, seemingly surprised at her abruptness. She'd never removed his hand from her like that, left him hanging without first showing him a place to land. But those doors wouldn't close themselves, and it wasn't like he was going to be the look out.
She hadn't been out with Auggie in awhile, she realized. Their once perfected ballet had become a little stilted, a little clumsy. Maybe it was her own physical failings of late that made her nervous. She just wanted everybody to get around in one piece.
"Okay, first take your shirt off," she urged him, taking the cane from his hand. He'd removed his shirt plenty of times in her presence; this was the first time she had to ask. "Your cane's just to your left."
She started on the bottom buttons of his shirt without really thinking about it. She'd done this plenty of times, too, in other rooms that weren't churches. Quicker, and with less precision. She was filled with a tenderness she couldn't name- it was warm and it was worried.
"Sorry," he whispered as they both reached for the same button, hands colliding above his navel.
"That's okay," she said, pulling her hands away.
As he removed his shirt, she was glad he couldn't see her face. He was burnt, bloodied, and still swollen in places. The same Auggie who'd once shaken off a bullet in the streets of Medellin, could barely remove his shirt. She heard a horrified noise escape one of their lips. Was it hers? She didn't realize.
"I consider myself lucky," he said. "If you hadn't shown up when you did-"
Hot tears pricked at the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away before they could creep into her voice. "Sorry it took so long."
"Stop it," he said firmly. "You came just in time."
This was the softest voice he'd used with her in an entire year, Annie realized. All their exchanges had been terse, or desperate, or angry... They hadn't been this vulnerable in just as long, and it made her sick to realize.
As carefully and quietly as she could, Annie reached for the spot she'd stitched up on that wild trip to Colombia. Her fingertips found the spot, but she couldn't let them linger without consequences. She was looking for trackers, too, of course, but as she turned him around and inspected his stomach, she was assessing the passage of time.
She didn't mean to look guilty when Ryan burst through the door.
"I'm just checking for trackers," she said like a kid with one hand in the cookie jar.
Her inspection sped up considerably in Ryan's presence. It had been a year. Things were different now.
Weren't they?