Those squares weren’t just pieces of fabric; they were her memories, her heart in tiny stitched moments. She’d sewn them imagining a lifetime of more.
Images flickered through her—doubling, layering, rewriting themselves:
The shuttered café. The thermos of cocoa.
The laundromat, and his fingers brushing hers in warm cotton.
The snowy trail and the letter that made her chest ache.
The church and the way he’d held her like he was afraid to let go.
He’d retraced their story. He was reliving them, one by one.
“The next square is—” He broke off with a soft, rueful laugh.
The pale stitched ocean, the sun, the warmth. Their honeymoon. Skin against skin, sunlight in their hair, the first days of a marriage she’d thought nothing could break.
Her breath hitched.
His gaze dipped to her mouth—slow, deliberate. It made her heart slam against her ribs.
“I don’t know what to do with that one,” he admitted, voice low, his gaze flicking between her lips and her eyes.
She swallowed. Her voice barely came out. “What do you want to do?”
He stepped in—hands finding her waist. The air between them tightened.
At last, he kissed her.
The world melted away—her breath, the cold, even the car beneath her hand. All of it blurred under the heat of his mouth, the rough exhale against her cheek, the grip of his fingers at her back pulling her closer.
When he drew back, his breath was unsteady. His eyes were dark, undone.
“What I want,” he said, voice rough, “is to seduce you.”
The words burned through her. The night seemed to go impossibly still.
She searched his face. Saw the want, yes, but also the restraint. The question. He wasn’t taking; he was offering, waiting to see if she’d step forward, too.
Her husband wanted to seduce her, and he was asking for her permission.
She reached up, traced the sharp line of his jaw with her fingertips—slow, deliberate.
The answer was clear.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “So seduce me.”
CHAPTER 54
Tom
The door clicked shutbehind him.
Tom leaned against it for a second, eyes closed. The night air still clung to him, the faint trace of Lauren’s perfume in his coat.
So seduce me.
The words looped in his head, steady and impossible.
