As she hugged her elbows, Ethan was struck by the huge number of times in her life Naomi had had to be brave. He wanted to show her that she didn’t always have to be the strong one. That if she let him, he’d carry some of the weight. No matter the outcome of this discussion, Ethan wasn’t ready to go back to his life before he’d met her, but something told him to wait out Naomi’s reaction. What if the trick to reaching her, one of them at least, was just patience? Standing still long enough that she would grow used to him. That she would let herself relax.
