“I feel it too,” he says quietly.
“Feel what?”
“The pull.” He stands slowly, and the kitchen suddenly feels very small. “Like a current running through the air. Something I can’t explain.”
I can hear my own pulse now. “What is it?”
He takes a step toward me. Then another. Until he’s close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him.
“I don’t know,” he lies. I can tell it’s a lie. There’s something he’s not telling me. Something big.
But I don’t push. Because right now, standing this close to him, feeling the heat radiating off his body, I’m not sure I want to know.
“This is crazy,” I whisper.
“Probably.”
“I don’t do this. I don’t open up to people. I don’t tell strangers about my failed relationships and my dreams about furniture.”
“I’m not a stranger.” His voice is low, rough. “Not anymore.”
He’s right. Somewhere between the screaming match and this quiet breakfast conversation, he stopped being a stranger. He stopped being the monster who trapped me here.
Now he’s just... Tolin. A man with a scar and too much pride and a loneliness that mirrors my own.
“I still don’t trust you,” I say.
“I know.”
“I’m still angry about the phone. And the car door. And the way you spoke to me.”
“You should be.”
“And I don’t understand any of this. The way you’ve changed. The way I feel when I’m around you. The way I can’t seem to stay away even when every logical part of my brain is screaming at me to run.”
He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull back. His fingers brush my cheek, tucking a curl behind my ear. The contact sends heat racing through me.
“I’m going to earn your trust,” he says. “I’m going to prove to you that I’m not like the men who hurt you before. I’m going to spend every day showing you that you’re not a stepping stone. You’re not a placeholder. You’re not ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ or any of the bullshit they made you believe.”
My eyes are burning. I blink rapidly, refusing to cry.
“You don’t even know me.”
“Then let me.” His hand drops from my face, but he doesn’t step back. “Let me know you. The real you. Not the woman who scrubs floors and keeps her head down and never asks for anything. The woman who dreams about green velvet chairs and homes of her own and a life where she finally gets to be first.”
A tear escapes despite my best efforts. I wipe it away quickly.
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you care?”
He’s quiet for a moment. When he answers, his voice is barely above a whisper.
“Because I think you might be the reason I finally stop punishing myself.”
That knocks something loose in me. I don’t have a response for that. Don’t know what to do with what I’m feeling.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I reach out and take his hand.
