"You've said thank you a hundred times already."
"It bears repeating."
He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than usual.
"You don't have to keep thanking me. You're not a burden."
"I'm definitely a complication."
"Those aren't the same thing." He turned to look at me, something unreadable in his gray eyes. "You're allowed to take up space, Tobias. You're allowed to be here."
I didn't know what to say. Nobody had ever told me I was allowed to take up space before. The Langfords were all about minimizing inconvenience, about being useful without being visible. Be present for photos. Attend required events. Otherwise, stay out of the way.
"I don't know how to do that," I admitted. "Be somewhere I'm actually wanted."
The words hung in the air between us. Too honest. Too raw.
Vance's jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought he might say something. Then the commercial ended, the show returned, and the moment passed.
But something had changed.
I could feel it in the space between us. The air was different now, charged with something I didn't have a name for.
That night, I lay awake for hours, thinking about gray eyes and rough voices and the way he'd saidyou're allowed to be herelike it was simple. Like wanting things was simple.
Like wanting him might be simple too.
Chapter8
Vance
I was losing my mind.
Not the dramatic kind. The slow, creeping kind, where you look around one day and realize everything's different and you can't remember when it changed.
The apartment smelled like food now. Real food, cooked on purpose, instead of takeout containers and reheated pizza. There was a plant on the windowsill that was somehow still alive despite my lack of knowledge about plant care. Tobias had started watering it every morning, standing at the window with a small cup, talking to it in a low voice when he thought I wasn't listening.
I'd caught myself watching him do it yesterday. The way the morning light caught his profile. The gentle curve of his mouth when he murmured to the plant. The strip of bare skin at his lower back where my shirt rode up.
I'd turned away before he noticed. Poured my coffee too fast, burned my tongue.
The remote had a designated spot now. My laundry was folded. My sock drawer was organized by color.
And every night, I came home to Tobias.
He was always there. Reading, cooking, rearranging things. Sometimes just sitting by the window, watching the street below with an unreadable expression. He'd look up when I walked in, and something in his face would shift. Soften. Like seeing me was a relief.
I'd started thinking of it as coming home instead of going to my apartment.
That was the problem. That was exactly the problem.
Work was getting complicated.
Ronan had cornered me in the security office that afternoon, arms crossed, wearing his most suspicious expression. The one that made suspects confess just to make it stop.
"You've been leaving on time."
"Is that a crime?"
