“I need to believe you,” I whisper.
“Then start small,” he says into my hair. “Believe this: you’re not alone in this room. Or the next. Or the one after that.”
The rain keeps time. My pulse slows until it matches his. The apartment smells like wet wool and dish soap and something new I don’t have a name for yet. I lift my head. “Okay,” I say, and mean it enough for tonight.
He walks me to the kitchen like the distance between door and counter is a rickety bridge we can cross if we don’t look down. The under-cabinet light pools warm across the island. He slides a legal pad toward me—when did he even put that there?—and clicks a pen he stole from some sponsor event. The click should annoy me. Tonight it steadies me.
“Okay,” he says. “More specifics.”
“Specifics,” I echo, rolling the word between my teeth like it might splinter if I bite too hard. “Childcare.”
“We start a list of names,” he says immediately. “People we trust. We ask Sophie for recs, background checks, trial days later. I shift travel when I can, you set clinic hours that respect your body, not the calendar. We build a budget that assumes help, not heroics.”
“Money,” I say, because saying it out loud makes my tongue want to curl. I’m good at budgeting. I’m worse at accepting help.
“Handled,” he says, simple. “I’ve already talked to my accountant about a trust. Your name on everything that touches this house and this kid. No ‘his money/her money.’ Our family’s money.”
The way he saysourshould be illegal. It slides under my skin and warms the places adrenaline iced. “Legal,” I push, because romance doesn’t hold up in a deposition. “HR. Retaliation. Device scope.”
“Julia loops counsel at eight with drafts we mark up together,” he says, tapping the pad. “We request written limits on device review and anti-harassment enforcement with teeth. We decline to sign anything that implies wrongdoing. We ask for a clear reassignment that preserves your seniority until the review is over. If they balk, I go public with exactly that ask.”
“You’ll be benched.”
“I already offered to sit,” he reminds me, not grandstanding, just…steady. “If that’s what it takes to keep your career intact, we pay that cost.”
I swallow. The ache doesn’t vanish, but the edges get names. “Boundaries,” I say. “With everyone.”
“PR goes through Julia,” he says. “Family goes through you. Fans go through nothing at all. My socials go dark at night; yourstoo if you want. Anyone who tries you in a grocery store aisle learns I’m bilingual in polite and lethal.”
It shouldn’t make me laugh. It does, a small broken sound that turns whole on the exhale. “You can’t fight every aisle.”
“I can try.” He grins, quick and crooked, then sobers. “But we write scripts for the moments we can’t avoid. Three sentences each. No more performing than necessary.”
My shoulders drop an inch. Scripts I can do. I flip the pad and start a column with my neat, trainer handwriting—Doctors, Counsel, Boundaries, Scripts—and my hands stop shaking long enough to underline each heading.
The phone on the counter hums against the stone. Unknown number. The preview pulses once, twice:We have a right to know?—
I don’t read the rest. My body moves before my brain can dress it in rational clothes. I flip the phone face-down like I’m laying a card I refuse to play.
Jason tracks the motion, eyes going storm-dark for a second. He doesn’t reach for the phone; he reaches for me. His palm lands warm on the small of my back. “We pick us,” he says softly. “Every time the world asks for a piece.”
I look at the black rectangle, at my name in neat columns on yellow paper, at the man who thinksouris a word you build a life with. The anxiety still hums, but it’s a frequency I can breathe inside.
“I’m choosing this room,” I say. Saying it makes it real. “I’m choosing you.”
“Good,” he says, relief ghosting his mouth. “Me too.” He slides the pad aside like we’ve earned a pause. “Five minutes off the clock,” he adds, quietly smug. “No lists. Just…us.”
I nod. I can give us five. Maybe more. The phone hums again and I don’t move. The world can knock. Tonight, it waits outside.
Five minutes off the clock stretches into a quiet I didn’t know my apartment could hold. The list lies between us like proof we can build something. Jason watches my face like the next step is mine to call, and the permission in that unhooks something low in my spine.
“Come here,” I say, and my voice doesn’t wobble. He comes like gravity works differently for me.
I set my hands on his shoulders and feel the hum of muscle under cotton, familiar and new at once. New because I’m not cataloging injuries or planning rehab; familiar because this is the body I’ve known in a thousand almosts, the one my hands remembered even when my pride pretended not to. He waits, still as a held breath, until I tilt up and find his mouth.
The kiss is the opposite of a press conference. No stage, no script, no room to fill—just the small miracle of yes. He answers but he doesn’t take. When I press closer, he meets me. When I ease back, he follows the pace I set. His palms bracket my hips, wide and careful. The careful is what undoes me. He’s learned me like ice—edges, angles, places to push and places to glide.
“Tell me if anything feels off,” he murmurs against my lower lip. “I can read tape, but I’m not reading your body without the notes.”
