Her eyes closed, tears slipping free with relief so deep it almost hurt. She straddled his lap, grateful for the soft sweatsthat she’d found in the bedroom, and tucked her head back on his shoulder.
Then she said the words that had lived in her chest for fifteen years.
“Back then . . . I shouldn’t have told you to stay gone.”
His entire body stilled.
“I only left,” he said quietly, “because I thought you wanted me to.” His words rumbled in his chest under her hand.
Norah swallowed. “Marshall?—”
“You told me to go,” he said, voice low but steady. “And I...took you at your word. I thought—” He paused, jaw flexing. “I thought staying would make things worse for you.”
She had imagined a hundred versions of this conversation over the years. None of them prepared her for how raw he sounded.
“I said it because I didn’t want to be the reason you hesitated,” she said, voice shaking despite her efforts. “You were running into danger every day, and I was twenty and terrified and completely unprepared to care about someone who lived like that. I think a part of me knew that if I asked you to stay, you would. And that terrified me more than losing you. You were meant to do exactly what you’ve done.”
His breath left him in a slow exhale.
“I was young,” she whispered. “And scared. And stupidly in love with you, and I didn’t know how to hold all of that at once.”
Marshall’s hands tightened on her hips—not possessive, just steadying—as if the truth she’d just laid bare shifted something deep in him.
For a long moment, he didn’t speak.
Then, quietly, “You weren’t stupid.” His thumb drew slow circles against her side. “You were twenty. And I was a kid pretending to be a man. I thought sacrifice meant disappearing. I thought loving you meant stepping out of your way.”
She lifted her head, eyes searching his.
“I didn’t know how to stay,” he said, voice rough with regret. “Not then. Not with everything in me pulling in two different directions.”
Marshall’s eyes lingered on her. It made her skin prickle, made heat crawl up her neck. She hadn’t been studied like that in.. .maybe ever. Instinctively, her hand flew to her hair, pushing at a loose strand.
“What?” she whispered, cheeks warming. “Do I look as wrecked as I feel?”
A breath of a laugh escaped him, soft and surprised, like the question tugged at something in him.
“I like you in my jacket. I’ve often had the urge to wrap you up in it like a kitten I can shield from the world,” he said with a half-smile.
Her face flared hotter—an involuntary, helpless reaction. She ducked her head, staring at her fingers swallowed in the too-large sleeves. The jacket smelled like him and suddenly she was acutely aware of how small she felt inside it. Small, but not in a way that made her shrink. In a way that made her feel held.
“I don’t...think I’ve ever been compared to a kitten before,” she murmured, trying for lightness, failing to hide the tremor of shy delight threading through her voice. “I’m not sure Cleo would appreciate the comparison.”
Marshall’s expression gentled further. “Only because no one else has seen you the way I do.”
His words landed somewhere deep in her chest, loosening something she hadn’t realized she’d kept bolted shut. She swallowed hard, blinking down at the borrowed fabric bunching at her wrists, embarrassed by how much the compliment mattered—and how much she liked that it came from him.
She wasn’t used to being looked at like this. As someone...precious. Someone worth shielding.
Her breath shook. “What do you see?”
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “Do you want the short version or the one that makes me sound completely gone for you?”
He didn’t let her answer.
“I see a woman who doesn’t even realize how remarkable she is,” he said easily. “Who walks into a room and changes the way the air feels without meaning to. Who connects dots faster than anyone I’ve ever worked with.”
His thumb brushed her cheekbone, slow and warm, as if he needed the contact to steady himself.
