10 — Apology

**JAPHETH POV**

Kate didn't answer my text for almost an hour, and when she finally did, it wasn't sympathy.

**KATE:** Fix it yourself, Japheth. I'm not doing your apologizing for you this time.

She was right to say it, even if it didn't make the drive to Jasmine's apartment any easier. I sat in the back of the car turning the whole conversation over in my head, trying to find the version of it where I hadn't sounded like I was managing her career instead of respecting it, and I couldn't find one. Because there wasn't one. I'd said what I said, and it had landed exactly the way it sounded.

Edmund didn't ask questions this time. He'd learned, over the past few weeks, when to just drive.

"You want me to wait?" he asked, pulling up outside her building.

"If she lets me in, go home. If she doesn't, I might need the ride back."

He huffed something that might've been a laugh. "For what it's worth, boss, whatever you did  apologize like you mean it. Not like you're trying to win."

I sat with that for a second before I got out of the car. Edmund had a way of saying the exact thing I needed to hear without making it feel like a lecture.

I stood outside her door longer than I probably needed to before I knocked. When it finally opened, she was in an old t-shirt, her hair loose, her eyes red enough that I knew she'd been crying at some point that day, and it wasn't just because of me  or it hadn't started because of me.

"You look terrible," she said, which from her was as much an invitation as an insult.

"I feel terrible." I meant it plainly, no charm attached to it. "Can I come in?"

She stepped back and let me, which felt like more than I'd earned.

Her apartment was quiet  Luke and Ryker's door shut down the hall, some sitcom laugh track murmuring faintly through the wall. She sat on the arm of her couch instead of the couch itself, arms crossed, waiting.

"I said it wrong," I started. "Earlier. I need you to know that."

"You said it exactly the way you meant it, Japheth. That's the part that hurt."

"No." I shook my head, and I made myself hold her gaze instead of looking away, because looking away would've been easier and she deserved the harder thing. "I meant that I'm scared of what people at that company will do to you because of me. I did not mean that you don't deserve this. You've earned every bit of that promotion, and the only person making it complicated is me, not you. I should have led with that instead of my own fear, and I didn't, and I'm sorry."

She was quiet for a long moment, studying me like she was trying to decide whether to believe it.

"You know what the worst part was?" she said finally, quiet. "For about ten seconds, sitting in my office after you said it, I actually believed you might be right. That maybe I hadn't really earned it. That maybe it really was just — convenient, because I already knew you, because it was easier for everyone to give it to the girl who was already in the building." Her voice wavered, just slightly. "And then I got angry, because I've spent my whole life being told my worth comes with conditions attached, and I promised myself after Oli died that I wasn't going to keep doing that. Keep shrinking to fit whatever room I was standing in."

"You shouldn't have to," I said. "Not for me. Not for anyone."

"I know that. Knowing it and feeling it are different things."

"I know," I said, because I did better than she probably realized. Four years in London, plenty of it spent convincing myself I deserved the distance I put between us because I wasn't worth staying for. Different shape, same shadow.

She uncrossed her arms slowly, some of the tension easing out of her shoulders. "Voss is really going to come after me for this? If I take it?"

"He's going to come after anything he can use. It won't be about you specifically it'll just be the easiest story for him to tell." I hesitated, then added the part I probably should have led with hours ago. "But that's my problem to manage, not yours. You should take the position because you earned it, and I'll deal with whatever Voss makes of it. That's actually my job now. I should've said that the first time instead of asking you to carry my fear along with your own good news."

Something in her face softened, finally, the guardedness cracking just slightly at the edges.

"Thank you," she said, and it came out smaller than I expected, almost shy. "For coming here. For actually saying it instead of just texting Kate to smooth it over for you."

"Kate refused, actually."

That got a small, surprised laugh out of her  the first one since I'd walked in. "Good. She should have."

We sat with that for a moment, the quiet between us different now, less like a wall and more like something we were both just being careful with.

"I visited Oli today," she said, after a while, and I felt my chest go tight, because I still didn't have a right answer for grief, even four years of practicing hadn't taught me that one. "I do that. When things feel like too much."

"Does it help?"

"Sometimes. Today I mostly just cried at a headstone and let Luke and Ryker make me laugh about it after, which is probably not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it works." She glanced at me, something careful and unguarded at the same time in her expression. "You would have liked him. Oli. He never once made me feel like I had to earn being loved."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't try to say anything clever. "I'm glad you had that. Even if it hurts now that it's gone."

She nodded, blinking fast, and reached over  not for a kiss, not for anything more than this and rested her hand over mine on the couch cushion between us.

"I don't forgive easily," she said quietly. "You know that better than anyone."

"I know."

"But I believe you meant it. The apology."

"I did."

We sat like that for a long while, her hand over mine, the sitcom laugh track still murmuring faintly through the wall, neither of us in any hurry to be anywhere else. It wasn't a kiss. It wasn't a declaration. It was just two people who'd hurt each other more than once, sitting quietly in the same room, choosing to stay in it anyway.

When I finally stood to leave, she walked me to the door.

"Same time tomorrow?" I asked. "Meaning work. The normal way. Not "

"I know what you meant, Japheth." A small smile, real this time. "Yes. Same time tomorrow."

I left without pushing for anything more than that, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, it felt like enough.