My admiration is interrupted when my phone buzzes again beside me. I pick it up without thinking.
MOM
If you still care about this family, I’d think you’d want to step up. But maybe you’re too good for us now.
The knot in my stomach twists tighter as I reread the text and try not to internalize the words. It’s nothing new. It’s just meaner this time. She has a way of making me feel like a villain for wanting anything for myself.
I sigh and return my phone to the counter.
“Didn’t like what you saw?” Nathaniel’s voice cuts gently through my thoughts.
I blink. I didn’t notice his approach. He’s standing by the open fridge now, a can of Diet Coke in one hand and a glass of ice in the other. He doesn’t look at me as he closes the door and walks over, setting them beside me on the island with that same ease he applies to everything else in his life. Like this—remembering what I like, how I like it—is second nature to him.
I force a half-smile, curling my fingers around the can. “It is what it is.”
He simply nods before moving into my space. One of his hands braces beside my hip on the counter. The other lifts to brush my hair over my shoulder, his fingers grazing the curve of my neck.
I sink into his embrace without thinking, winding my arms around his waist and pressing my cheek to his chest, soothed by the steady beat of his heart. He smells crisp and clean, like cedar and warm cotton. He drops a kiss against my hair.
“I’ve got you, baby,” he murmurs, his voice low and reassuring.
And he does.That’s the thing. He always does.
As he’s done this whole week, he doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Doesn’t offer platitudes or prod at something he knows I don’t want to say. He just holds me. Lets me decide what I want to give.
And I love him all the more for it.
My grip on his waist tightens. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Being here with you is the only thing that makes sense lately.”
I tilt my face up to kiss him—soft at first, sweet. But it deepens fast. His hand curls around my waist. My body moves closer. I need this. I needhim.
I open my mouth to him and he takes. His hand splays across the small of my back and the heat between us begins to rise.
I kiss him harder. He’s warm and steady beneath my palms. When I slide my hands under the hem of his shirt, tracing the cut of his stomach, he exhales against my mouth. He leans into it, sucking on my bottom lip until I forget where one of us ends and the other begins.
When I reach lower, fingers teasing the waistband of his pants, he catches my wrist.
“You’ve been all over me lately,” he says, not critical, just observant in the way he always is with me.
Heat rises to my cheeks because he’s right. I’ve been reaching for him more, using the feeling of his body against mine to quiet everything else I don’t want to face.
I try to laugh it off. “Do you want me to stop?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts my hand and presses it to his chest, right over the wild thrum of his heart.
“No,” he says. “I don’t want you to stop. But I also don’t want you to hide. I want you to be present. Beherewith me, Olivia.”
I don’t say anything. I just look at him, feeling everything all at once—gratitude that he knows me this well, guilt that I’m using intimacy as a stand-in for conversations I’m not ready tohave, and a fierce love for the man who recognizes my coping mechanisms even when I try to hide them.
So, I simply nod.Yes, I’m right here.
“If this is what you need…” He holds my gaze as he kisses my knuckles. “Then show me.”
His hands slide under my thighs, lifting me onto the counter. Warm hands, warm breath—the whole world narrowing down to the space between us.
He watches me, and I feel the shift—the slow, certain pull of a tide. It doesn’t rush in, it builds—patient and sure, but inevitable. He’s waiting for something—more than touch, more than yes. He wants me to choose this with him. Not as a distraction, but a declaration.
And maybe I do too.
