Page 14

"I'd like to stay," he says. He puts the word like down flat and slow, as though he's lifting it off a high shelf. That decides me.

I don't argue. I don't say a word. I let go of his hand and move in front of him, turning so that my back is to his chest. I reach behind me and take his arms and draw them around my waist, one over the other.

He's rigid for a second. Then his forearms close, heavy and warm. I feel him lower his chin until it rests on top of my head. I'm broad enough to block the line to the cannon. I'm soft enough to be felt. I wrap both my hands around his scarred wrist, and I hold on.

The first shot goes through the ground and up my legs.

His body locks behind me. Every muscle goes to wire. His breath stops. I feel his heart slamming against my back through his jacket like something trying to get out. I do the only thing I know.

I hum. Low and quiet, no louder than breathing. Ella's Dream a Little Dream, in B-flat, right up under his good ear.

The second shot comes. His arms tighten around my ribs until I can feel the breath leave me and I let it go. I let him. I give him as much of me as he needs to hold on to.

The third shot. A tremor runs through the hands I'm holding. I stroke my thumb over the numb ridge of his scar, over and over, and keep humming.

The fourth.

Then there's smoke on the wind and applause going up all over the Common, and a child shrieking with joy. Under my hands, Ben exhales. A long ragged breath that stirs the hair at the top of my head.

Nobody noticed.

"Come on," I say finally. It's the first thing I've said. "There's a bench behind the Granary. It's quiet."

He lets me lead him. We go around the back of the white clapboard walls, where the noise of the Common falls away to a murmur and the sun lies in a long bar across a bench against the foundation.

He sits. I sit. The wood is warm. We're facing the back of the building, and above us, I realize, on the far side, my banner moves in the wind with a sound like a soft sail.

He doesn't say anything. His hands hang between his knees. I don't touch him and I don't talk. The quiet between us is somehow the most comfortable room I've ever been in.

"Thank you," he says finally.

"You don't have to—"

"I'd like to tell you what I need. If that's all right."

He looks at his hands. "Next time, you don't have to talk. You did the right thing. You didn't ask if I was all right, you didn't fix it, you didn't say it's okay. You didn't whisper. And you stayed."

"I can do all of that."

"I know," he says. "That's why I'm saying it."

I look at the profile of him. The tired eyes, the gray at his temple, the pulse still going in his jaw.

"Next time?" I say slowly.

"There's a whole day," he says. His mouth lifts. "There's a dinner. There'll be a toast."

"God. There is a toast."

"Sounds loud."

"It's mostly Grant. You'll like it."

I tip my head back against the warm clapboard and close my eyes. "I'm sorry about what he said."

"I'm not," Ben says. "I'd have had no reason to kiss you."

My eyes open. He's looking straight at me. Nothing hidden in it at all.