After we broke up, I read a book on trauma. Wondering where I’d gone wrong in those short hours after she’d broken the news. For the moment, my lips were a balm. Later? We’d discover more of how to heal her.
I dipped my head, lips brushing her once, then again, slower. Testing. Honoring. She melted into me with a soft sigh, her hands sliding up my chest, gripping the front of my hoodie. An anchor to the insane little laughter that fluttered from her lips. Our mouths fit in that effortless, aching way that made the world fall silent.
30
NATASHA
Never should’ve goneto the hospital with Lorenzo. I always buried the terror I felt during the day while visiting Doctor Ghannam. Today, that wasn’t the case. Lorenzo’s patient eyes, his tragic cousin, the cancer, the damn tree. None of it helped.
And somehow—after everything—I flew into Lachlan’s orbit. Literally. A quick call to the Dodgers owner and a helicopter landed me here.
As I’d watched him beneath the glow of stadium lights, my soul cracked wide open. Pop’s statement and Justice’s parting remarks on Taco Tuesday, which swirled through my mind since February, all found their rest.
Ifound my rest in Lachlan’s arms.
Could not stop kissing him.
Didn’t want to.
Because I was done pretending I didn’t need him like air.
His mouth moved over mine, slow but firm, tongue gliding against mine with a tenderness that shattered me. He kissed me like he knew the way I broke andstillloved me through every fractured piece.
As my hands clutched his hoodie and my toes ached from holding myself up to offer more of my mouth to him, I breathed him in. Mint. Cedar. Yes, the cologne from Greece had gotten me through these past months. That scent of him undid me.
When we broke apart, my breath stuttered in my throat, and I leaned in again for another taste. If we stayed close enough, I could stop time. And, just maybe, I’d forget the ache in my toes from leaning upward too.
My fingers stayed balled onto the front of his hoodie like I was bracing myself against a storm, but he crashed over me. His presence. His patience. His love.
Justice’s parting words took one last spin through my mind:Now the question is, are you gonna keep running? Or are you gonna turn around and fight for the one man who’s fought for you all this time?
Tears gathered while I pictured the fruit of his time and dedication—the gallery in New York. What I saw? A beautiful, finished product. What he’d created had taken effort, patience, and love. Hard work. Then I remembered how he had anchored me through the storms my mind still conjured. My nightmares, my sleep paralysis … no one should endure them. But he stayed. And somehow, the fear bowed to him.
“You’re like home to me, Lach,” I confessed, a feathery whisper in the cool May air.
Lachlan’s smile was gentle, but the ache in his eyes gutted me. He cupped my cheek. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”
“I’m sorry …” I choked. “For not offering the same to you.” My gander rose, eyes stinging, heart cracked open and raw. “I wanted to be.”
“You still can.”
As we leaned against his car in the players’ parking lot, I told him about how his sisters-in-law were our greatest champions and about Dr. Vashone. He smiled, offering to attend a sessionwith me. After a while, silence dropped between us again. A silence where everything we’d ever buried between us was now laid bare. Then he said the words I hadn’t expected to crave.
“Come home with me tonight.”
Not rushed. Not a demand.
Just … a promise wrapped in invitation.
I nodded, slow and sure, heart pounding against my chest.
“I’ll go slow,” he promised, brushing a kiss to my forehead so reverently it made my eyes burn with unshed tears. “Only what you’re ready for.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks before I could stop them. Not from sadness. But from finally feeling secure when it came to … to him holding me through the darkness.
My voice came out broken, but sure. “I trust you.”
And I did.
