CHAPTER 30
VANGUARD
The Muppet Showblares from my widescreen TV, and Mia laughs, this full-bodied sound that makes my chest feel buoyant in the best possible way, as Kermit frantically tries to introduce the guest star while chaos erupts backstage.
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen this,” I say, pulling her closer on the couch. She’s wearing one of my T-shirts and her underwear and nothing else, her bare legs tucked underneath her, hair still damp from the shower we shared twenty minutes ago.
“We didn’t have access to a lot of US streamers growing up,” she says. “My mum thought it would rot our brains.”
“She wasn’t wrong.” I press a kiss to the top of her head. “But The Muppets are world-class programming.”
As we continue watching, Animal destroys a drum set while Miss Piggy loses her mind. Mia snorts into her wine glass, and I find myself watching her more than the show. The way the light from the TV plays across her face, the way her eyes dance moments before she laughs, that cluster of freckles on her collarbone I traced with my tongue an hour ago.
Christ, has it only been an hour?
The evening replays in my head like a highlight reel I’ll never delete. The picnic on Lady Liberty’s torch, with champagne and candles and the city sparkling below us. The way Mia listened when I told her about the calibration, about the supposed peacekeeping, about feeling like I don’t know who I am anymore. She didn’t try to fix it or minimize it. She justheardme. I can’t remember the last time I was actually heard.
Feels fucking good.
And then, after the champagne was gone and the candles guttered out, she’d pushed me back against those cushions and worked her way down my body with a deliberateness that made my head spin. Her mouth was hot and wet, her eyes locked on mine the whole time, watching my face like she wanted to memorize every reaction. I came so hard, I saw stars, and when I finally caught my breath, she was smiling up at me like she’d won something.
You’re going to kill me,I’d told her.
I was joking, but she didn’t seem to find it funny.
The flight back to my penthouse was a blur of cold air and primal desire. The second we landed on my balcony, I had her pinned against the glass doors, my mouth on her throat, her legs wrapped around my waist. We didn’t make it past the couch. I took her right there on the leather, still in her coat, her nails raking down my back, her voice breaking on my name.
And now, here we are—clean and warm and watching Miss Piggy beat Kermit over the head with a hammer.
This is what happiness feels like, I realize. This ordinary, unremarkable moment. A woman in my shirt, a silly show on TV, the smell of takeout containers in the kitchen—this is everything I didn’t know I was missing.
And now I know what I’ve been missing, I don’t think I can ever go back.
I’m…falling for her.
The thought doesn’t arrive like some revelation. It’s been there for a while now, growing in the dark like something planted without my permission. But tonight, watching her laugh at Miss Piggy’s latest diva tantrum, I can finally name it.
I am falling in love with her. Free-falling, actually. I’m obsessed with her, can’t breathe without thinking about her, can’t sleep without reaching for her, can’t imagine a future that doesn’t have her in it. I’mplummeting. She’s become the axis my whole world turns on, and that should terrify me—doesterrify me—but I only seem to welcome it.
For the first time in years, I feel like a person instead of a product. For the first time since Emma died, I feel like I have something worth living for.Reallyliving.
“Can I help you?” Mia says without looking away from the screen. “You’re boring holes into me.”
“Can’t help it. You’re prettier than Miss Piggy.”
“High praise indeed.” She tilts her head up to kiss my jaw. “Though I think Kermit might disagree.”
I catch her chin, turn her face toward mine, and kiss her properly. She tastes like sweet wine, and I feel that familiar hunger stirring again, like I can never truly be satisfied, never get enough and?—
I cry out as pain spears through my skull.
It’s sudden and brutal, like someone’s lancing a sword through my left temple. My vision gets blurry and sound distorts, the Muppet’s yammering warping into something slow and sinister. My hands clench involuntarily, and somewhere far away, so far away, I hear Mia’s sharp intake of breath.
“Nate? Hey, what’s wrong?”
I can’t answer, can’t think. There’s only the pain and beneath it, rising like something surfacing from deep water, a darkness I should recognize, should welcome like an old friend, but I don’t. Ugly thoughts. Violent thoughts.
I shove it down.Hard. Force my fingers to unclench, force my breathing to steady, force myself back into my body.
