I sighed and reached for the remote, pausing our show in the middle of a scene. He angled his head up to me, and I saw the confusion in his eyes. “Talk to me,” I whispered. “Tell me what’s been wrong with you the past few days?”
He opened his mouth and shut it a few times, and I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. It took everything in me not to push, to try to get the words that he kept pulling back. My patience was soon rewarded. He pulled away to sitstraight on the couch, angling his body toward mine. “We’re supposed to be taking it slow.” My brow furrowed, because I thought we’d been on the same page with every physical step we’d taken. “I’m having a really hard time taking it slow with you. Every time I look at you, it’s like… I don’t know? Static in my brain and this swelling in my chest and butterflies and the realization that I’m not taking it slow at all.”
I reached out to cover his hand with mine, hoping to ground him before he spiraled into a full ramble. “Matt, we can go slower. We can put the brakes on the physical stuff if you need—”
“No!” he exclaimed. “Oh my God, no. The physical stuff is great. I’m not talking about the physical stuff.” His words came out in a jumbled rush.
“I don’t understand.”
“You needed me to take the emotional stuff slow. You said you needed me to take the emotional stuff slow, because it might take a while for you to get on the same page and you might not ever get there, but I don’t think I’m doing a good job at it.” He looked down at our joined hands, and it dawned on me.
That was why he’d been quiet the past few nights.
He’d been trying to put on the brakes, trying to slow down the way he felt. He’d been pulling away because he wanted to protect me. I lifted his chin so I could look into those deep brown eyes of his, and I could see it all there. I could see the way he felt about me, the way he was trying to take control of it, so he didn’t scare me off.
And something else dawned on me.
I didn’t want him to rein it in. I didn’t want him to slow himself down or dull his shine in any way. His big, open heart was one of my favorite things about him. I didn’t want him to limit a single thing about himself. “Don’t.”
“What?”
“Feel what you feel. It takes me longer, but I never want you to shrink yourself down because of it.”
I never wanted that. I cared about him too much for that. I liked him too much for that.
The realization hit me like a freight train.
He wasn’t alone in catching feelings too fast. For the first time in years, I was pretty sure I had them, too. That was the truth of the tangled emotions I was feeling.
I needed more time to figure it all out. I needed more time to think about it, to make sure it was real, but I already knew it was true.
For the first time in years, I was romantically attracted to my partner.
15
Ithadbeenalmosta month since the fire, and I knew my time staying with Noah would be ending soon.
This fact hung around the apartment like a bad smell. It was heavy and oppressive, and I swore that I could feel it every time we looked at each other. The truth was, I didn’t want to go back to my apartment. I was comfortable at Noah’s. I loved waking up with him and falling asleep with him. Ever since the night we made lasagna and cleared the air, I didn’t even feel as bad about the fact that I was falling so fast for him.
Because yeah, it wasn’t what we’d talked about. It was the opposite of what we’d planned, but he wasn’t upset at the fact that my heart was trying to do a speed run of our relationship. Just like I didn’t mind that I might always be waiting for him to catch up.
Our relationship was working for us, and there was a small part of me that worried that maybe it wouldn’t work as well once we were no longer living together. It was silly, and I knew it, but that nagging fear was always there, humming under the surface.
It was a part of the bad smell.
I wasn’t even surprised when my phone rang in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. Ten minutes later, the other shoe had dropped. My apartment would be ready a week from Friday. I had only a week and a half left staying with my boyfriend, a week and a half of all the quiet, domestic moments I’d come to love. I had to savor them.
I closed my laptop early, an hour before Noah was meant to be home from work, and I started making dinner. I was pulling the roasted chicken and vegetables from the oven when I heard his key in the doorway. “I know it’s not what we had on the menu, but I wanted to surprise you.”
“It was my night to cook,” Noah pointed out with a grin and a quick kiss.
I pulled him in for a deeper one, the kind that I could feel at a cellular level. He was such an amazing kisser, and I was pretty sure I was going to miss the ready supply of those the most. I wondered how I was going to go back to not having them whenever I wanted. I was going to miss the way he always tasted like overly sweetened coffee when he got home from work, which was the only way I even liked coffee.
Normally, I hated it, but when it was on Noah’s tongue? Delicious.
The kiss lingered on my lips, even after he pulled away. I watched as his lips curved up into a small smile, and my stomach swooped. “Well, you’ve had a long day at work—”
“So have you,” he countered. “Don’t you have a milestone coming up?”
