“Hey,” I manage. Anything more would give me away.
“You okay?” His voice is lower now, stripped of the playfulness.
I think about lying, about brushing it off and retreating into my house and my silence. But I can’t do that with him. Not like this.
“It’s been a long night,” I say, slipping through the narrow side gate and stepping back toward the sidewalk. “I talked to my father.”
I can see the shadows of his jaw tighten under the streetlight. “How did it go?”
I shake my head, forcing something like a smile. “About how you’d expect. I just need sleep.”
His eyes narrow, something calculating moving behind them. “Can I come in and hold you?”
The question catches me off balance. Part of me wants to refuse to keep the chaos of tonight from spilling into him. Another part of me is already unraveling and wants his arms around me more than it wants air.
I nod. “I’d like that.”
He puts the car in reverse and parks down the block instead of blocking my driveway. I wait by the gate, listening to the steady rhythm of his footsteps on the pavement.
When he reaches me, his hand brushes my arm, light but intentional, before I turn and lead him inside.
He slows just before the steps, his gaze dropping to theground. A folded piece of paper has snagged against the edge of the concrete, half caught in a crack.
He bends and picks it up. “This yours?”
I glance down and recognize it immediately. My stomach tightens.
“Yeah,” I say. “I must’ve dropped it when I grabbed the mail.”
He looks at it once and reads a line out loud casually. “Sommelier certification program.”
“That’s it.” I shrug, already wanting it gone. “I told you about it. I think I got on some mailing list a while ago. It’s nothing.”
He folds the pamphlet once and holds it out to me.
“My hands are full,” I say, shifting my keys. “Can you bring it inside?”
“Sure.”
He tucks it into his back pocket without comment and lifts his eyes back to my face.
“You okay?” he asks, and the moment moves on.
I unlock the door, and he follows me in. The house shrinks with him in it, the space tightening until his presence is all there is.
He pulls me into his arms without a word, and I let myself lean into him. His heat, his solid weight, slows the frantic edge inside me. Exactly what I need. Exactly why wanting him means stepping into a life that’s already closing doors behind me.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs, his mouth brushing the top of my head.
“I’m cold,” I whisper. The words ring hollow even to me. My hands twist into his shirt as I breathe in the familiar scent of smoke and leather.
“Coco,” he says quietly. “Talk to me. You don’t have to carry whatever this is alone.”
I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to hear confirmation or denial in his voice. But once the words are there, they refuse to stay buried.
“I need to ask you something.”
His body shifts, tension snapping into place. He pulls back just enough to look at me. “Anything.”
