"Because of this," Wren said, gesturing at the purple walls, the tree, them. "Because moving felt like abandoning a sentence mid-clause. Because—" She stopped. The because that lived behind her teeth was the same because that lived behind his. Neither of them had practiced saying it in daylight.
Gus cleared his throat with the delicacy of a man exiting a scene he had not been cast in. "I'm going to go downstairs and invent a reason to clean the espresso machine. You two should... talk. Or not talk. But do it without an audience who takes notes for a living."
He left. The door clicked. Snow whispered at the windows.
Dez sat on the sofa. Wren sat opposite, then, after a beat, beside him. The tree lights blinked. Somewhere in the building a radiator knocked a lonely rhythm.
"I don't want you to turn it down because of a lease," Dez said.
"It isn't because of a lease."
"Then why?"
Wren looked at her hands. "You know why."