I feel her warmth through my shirt, her hair tickling my jaw, her scent filling my lungs.
I really hope she doesn’t notice how hard my heart is pounding. It’s a fucking drum solo in there.
I pull her in a little more, wrapping the side of my coat around her to keep her warm.
We sit like that for a minute. Maybe two.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I murmur into her hair.
My voice comes out low and rough. I don’t want to pop this bubble, don’t want her defenses snapping back up, don’t want her to snap at me and push me away.
She sighs against my shirt.
“My dad just called,” she whispers.
I tense, just a little. The Coach.
“Ah.”
“We… talked,” she says.
She pauses. I feel her fingers curl in the fabric of my sweater.
“Something’s wrong, Cohen. I can feel it. My mom’s acting weird, my dad’s evasive… I’ve got this horrible feeling they’re hiding something. That they’re drifting apart.”
She tilts her head back to look at me, eyes shiny again.
“They’ve always been the perfect couple. If they fall apart… I don’t know what I’d do.”
When I look at her, I don’t see the successful matchmaker, or the woman who drives me insane.
I see a daughter who’s scared out of her mind.
And I feel this fierce, almost violent need to protect her from whatever’s scaring her—even though I have no idea how. So I say the one thing I’ve wanted to tell her for a while.
“You’ve gotta stop.”
My voice comes out low, rough in the frozen quiet of the porch.
Then I gently ease her away a little, and instantly hate the loss of her weight against me.
But I need to move. I shrug out of my jacket, left in just my shirt as the night air slices at my skin, and drape the coat over her shoulders. It’s not a sweet gesture; it’s pure reflex. I can’t stand watching her shake.
She instinctively snuggles deeper into the fabric, pulling the lapels up under her chin, and looks at me with those glassy eyes—confused by my tone, my touch.
“Stop what?” she asks, voice small and uneven.
“Worrying about every damn person on this planet except yourself.”
Sloane arches an eyebrow. It’s automatic, her armor trying to snap back into place. “I don’t do that.”
“Yeah, you do. It’s literally all you do, for fuck’s sake.”
I drag a hand over my face, frustrated. Not with her—for her.
“You spent all day making sure Ivy and Cam were happy. You nudged Rae toward Grant—and yeah, I saw how you watched them, like their happiness was your personal responsibility.You’re already scheming something for Lina and Sebastian, even though they look ready to murder each other.”
I adjust the jacket around her shoulders, making sure she’s wrapped in it.
