“I just—” I pause, searching for the words. “I know I make jokes, and I tease, and I maybe showed up without pants, but this isn’t just me messing around, okay?”
His breath catches. He nods once.
“Are you messing around or…or are you serious?” I ask.
His brow furrows and his eyes go soft and melting and gentle. “I’m always serious when it comes to you, Iris.”
That’s the permission I needed—and I reach out to slip my hand into his, my thumb grazing his knuckles. “Can we try this?” I whisper.
Garrik’s fingers curl slowly around mine like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he grabs too fast. His hand is warm and calloused, andwhen I squeeze, he squeezes back—like it means something. Like he means it.
He looks at our joined hands for a moment, then up at me. “We can try,” he says softly. “But I need you to understand something first.”
My heart stutters. “Okay.”
“This isn’t casual for me,” he says, voice rough around the edges. “It never has been.”
I nod. “I know.”
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he says. “But I didn’t let myself. Not really. Not when we were fighting together, not after I came home, not even when you kissed me and I—” He breaks off, staring at me, eyes searching my expression for any sign of doubt. “If I let myself want this, Iris, there’s no halfway. I’m not good at pretending it’s just…fun.”
“I’m not either,” I say, barely a whisper. “You’re my best friend, Garrik. I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t take this risk if I didn’t mean it.”
His shoulders sag with something like relief.
“Then yeah,” he says. “We can try.”
Still holding my hand, he leads me through the garden, past rows of flowering vines and tangled trellises, toward a quiet corner shaded by a canopy of twisting trees. Moss carpets the ground like a soft, glowing blanket, and fireflies drift lazily overhead. It feels like a secret—the kind of place people tell stories about, but no one ever finds.
We sit together in the alcove, close but not touching, knees brushing every time I shift. My heart is hammering. My sweater slips a little further off my shoulder, and Garrik notices. He always notices.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
Then—
“I thought you were avoiding me after dinner,” I admit.
He lets out a quiet exhale. “I was.”
I glance at him, surprised.
“I didn’t want to say the wrong thing,” he says. “Didn’t want to mess it up. You looked so…happy. With my family. And I didn’t want to push. I’ve already pushed too much.”
“You haven’t,” I say, reaching for his hand again. “You haven’t pushed at all. If anything, I’ve been the one pushing.”
His thumb strokes over the back of my hand. “Yeah, well. I don’t mind being pushed. Not by you.”
I swallow hard, staring at where our hands are linked. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admit. “I just know that I want to be near you. That it feels good when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m the thing you want most in the whole universe.”
He turns to me, slowly, like he’s giving me time to stop this if I want to—but I don’t. I don’t want to stop. I want him to look at me like that forever.
“Iris,” he says, my name barely more than breath. “You are.”
And then he kisses me.
