Page 9 of Let Me In

“You’ve already said sorry,” he says, voice low and steady, with just enough edge to make it stick. “That’s enough. It’s okay now.”

It’s uncanny—because I was just about to. The words were already lining up behind my teeth, reflexive and automatic. But he caught them before I could, like he knew. Like he was already looking out for the part of me that can’t help but flinch first.

And it doesn’t sound like dismissal. It sounds like reassurance. Somehow, that shakes me more than if he’d raised his voice.

Then, just long enough to let the air settle between us:

“What should I call you?”

His eyes hold mine as he says it. Not hard. Not sharp. Just… steady. Like he means to hold the answer as carefully as I choose to give it.

He plants the axe into the stump beside him with one hand—clean and casual. Leaves it there and steps a little closer. Not too close. Just enough to show me he’s here because he wants to be. Because he’s listening.

I shift on the bike, flustered, already brushing my gloves down my jacket like I can clean the nerves off me.

“Um… Emmy. Emilia, but just Emmy or Em,” it comes out in the same breath I start trying to explain. Why I’m here, why I stopped. My existence as a whole, maybe. “I didn’t mean to make this weird. I just needed the shortcut. I didn’t want to cross a line.”

He watches me for a moment longer than feels fair, like he’s taking in more than what I’m saying, reading what I didn’t say, too.

“You’re not weird,” he says finally. His voice stays low, steady, but there’s a change in it now—calmer, more certain, touched with a quiet warmth that wasn’t there before.

“You’re real. People don’t know what to do with that sometimes.”

A beat passes. Then, softer, like it’s just for me, “You don’t have to apologize for being exactly how you are.”

“Emilia,” he says, like he’s saying it for the first time—slow and certain, like it matters to him. Like he’s trying it on not just as a name, but as something he wants to keep saying. I don’teven care that he used my full name, the one that always felt like it never quite fit.

Because when he says it, it does.

“Emmy is good, too,” and when he says that, something in me… loosens.

Then: “Cal. Or Calder.”

Not quite a smile. Just a flicker at the corners—subtle, warm, like a promise he isn’t ready to speak.

“You can use it,” he says. “Anytime.”

My mind trips over it. Use what? His name? The trail? The welcome in his voice?

“I don’t mind seeing you, either.”

That one nearly undoes me. Not loud. Not showy. Just said like it’s simple, obvious. Like I’m not a burden to notice.

He glances over his shoulder toward the deck. “You want some water?”

I blink. Caught off guard. Still thinking about using his name, anytime. “Water?”

He nods toward a thermos sitting on a small wooden crate beside the logs. “Or tea.”

My fingers fidget around the chin strap of my helmet. “What kind?”

“Nothing fancy,” he says. “Black. No sugar.”

I hesitate, then finally let my grip fall from the handlebars and lean back on the seat. “Please, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

I add, light and half under my breath, “You always keep a thermos ready for strangers on bikes?”

His reply is so quiet I almost miss it.

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