“I may have hidden things from you,” he goes on, voice steady. “But I’ve never lied to myself about who I am or what I feel for you. That’s the difference between us.” His gazeholds mine without wavering. “You, on the other hand…you are dishonest. Especially with yourself.”
The accusation lands exactly where my fears and desires intersect.
I’ve reached the edge of what I can deny. What he offers—the certainty of his pursuit—is exactly what pulls me in. I’ve always known he would chase me, no matter the distance I try to put between us. And standing here now, I’m forced to confront the truth—I’ve never really tried hard enough to outrun him. Some part of me always wanted him close enough to follow.
“I know why I do what I do. Obsession, devotion, whatever you want to call it—I’ve never lied about that. But you…” His eyes narrow as he regards me. “You keep pretending this isn’texactlythe kind of love you crave.”
The accuracy of his assessment leaves me feeling more exposed than ever before.
“You want the kind of love that leaves no room for uncertainty,” he says.
Indeed, he’s reshaped his world around me, arranged every facet of it with the conscientiousness of a man who refuses to misplace what he deems most precious to him. I think back to all the times he centered me without ceremony—his fidelity evident even in the smallest gestures.
“The kind of love,” he continues, “that will shoulder every burden for you.”
And he has. Nathaniel has always moved to intercept anything that might weigh me down. He anticipates my needs with an intuition that borders on unnerving. Meals ready before I ask. Plans smoothed out before I’ve voiced the worry. A hand on my back when the day threatens to tip. His attentiveness is meticulous, unwavering, and so unlike the household I grew up in—where stability depended on my ability to carry everythingwithout faltering. With him, I’ve been allowed to set the weight down. Allowed to be held instead of bracing for collapse.
“And the kind of love,” he murmurs, “that sees you completely and refuses to look away.”
Undeniably, he is the only person who has ever perceived every shift in my voice, every tightening of my shoulders, every fracture beneath the surface. The only one who has read me without demand or judgment. I never had to hide with him—my fear, my exhaustion, the parts of myself I spent years concealing from everyone else. He sees all of it, and somehow his desire sharpens rather than dims. Something inside me—starved for that level of recognition—unfurls with aching, trembling need.
“And I give all of that to you, Olivia. With no conditions but one: that you allow me the privilege of staying by your side.”
The words strike directly at the heart of everything. To stay by my side…that has always been the crux of it all, hasn’t it? The raison d’être behind every line he’s crossed, every act of interference, every manipulation of circumstance. It was never about controlling my choices. It was about protecting his place in my life.
And suddenly every transgression rearranges itself.
Each one orbits the same singular instinct: preserve the one thing he cannot bear to lose.
He has never tried to bend me. He has bent everythingaroundme—reshaping pathways, cushioning consequences, removing obstacles before I ever collided with them. He built a world where nothing could pull me out of his reach, where I would land softly every time.
The job sabotage sharpens into context. It still stings—of course it does—but the contours shift. He didn’t destroy my future or strip opportunities away. He steered me toward a path he believed was safer, more stable, more aligned with who I am and what I’ve worked toward. He didn’t undermine myambition; he rerouted it toward a life where I wouldn’t have to carry everything alone. Where I wouldn’t have to climb in isolation.
My resistance begins to fray, thread by thread—because he’s right about me in ways I’ve never dared to articulate.
He’s the only person who has ever been wholeheartedly on my side.
No one has ever put me first the way he does—not once in my entire life.
He closes the gap at last, a small step that feels bigger than it is. His presence settles around me, steady and enveloping.
“If not with me,” he murmurs, “then at least be honest with yourself, baby.”
He’s close enough that I feel the heat radiating from him, but he keeps his hands at his sides, refusing to touch me. The restraint is deliberate, a line drawn so I have to face the truth without the distraction of his touch.
“If you truly wanted a simple, ordinary love…” He sounds almost amused. “Someone who gives you space… Someone who would let you walk away… Wouldn’t you have left the first time I crossed a line?”
His voice softens into something unbearably intimate.
“So tell me, Olivia.” A smile curves at the corner of his mouth, small but certain. “What is it you keep coming back for?”
The question suspends the room in time. My breath holds without instruction. The resistance I’ve worn like armor crumbles, piece by piece, until there is nothing left of the scaffolding I built to keep myself sensible and contained.
All the reasons I had clung to—self-protection, independence, logic—scatter like dust. I can’t even recall them properly anymore. They feel outdated, flimsy, relics from a naïve girl who thought she could prevent the inevitable.
What fills the space instead is clarity—startling, and strangely freeing.
“You.” The answer rises with no shame or hesitation. It feels like stepping into something I’ve been circling for far too long.
