She looked at him. She was still holding his phone. Then she put the phone down on the nearest surface and crossed the two steps between them and put her arms around him — not romantic, not dramatic, just the complete and genuine embrace of someone who had been afraid for a long time and who trusted the person they were holding enough to let the fear release for a moment.
He stood very still for a fraction of a second. He had been braced for the adrenaline of the confrontation. He had not been braced for this. Then his good arm came up and around her and he held on — the gesture of someone who knew how not to hold too tight, who understood that this was not his moment to take from but hers to have.
"It's done," he said quietly. "You're done. The evidence is filed. They're caught. It's done."
She pulled back after a moment. Her eyes were bright but dry. She looked at his eyebrow. She reached out and touched the edge of it — light, practical, the assessment of someone noting the damage.
"We need to clean that," she said.
"After the police get here," he said.
"Before," she said, in the voice that was not an argument but a decision, and went to the bathroom to find what she needed.
She cleaned the cut ten minutes later at the kitchen table while Dev's call continued in the background. Her hands, when she pressed the small plaster to his eyebrow, were steady and careful. "There," she said. "Stop moving."
"I'm not moving," he said.
"Your eyebrows are moving. It's the same thing." She sat back. She looked at him across the kitchen table, both of them at the same level, close in the small kitchen. "Thank you," she said. "For all of it."
"You don't have to thank me," he said. "It's—"
"Don't say it's your job," she said. "Not right now."
He looked at her. He did not say it.
