I'm done being careful. The question is whether she'll let me prove it.
Chapter 15
Gemma
He takes my hand at the front door and doesn't let go.
Not dramatic. Not a declaration. He just takes it. We walk inside, the door closes behind us, and he turns to look at me the way he's been not looking at me for weeks — all that careful distance gone, like he finally stopped holding his breath.
My heart is doing something irresponsible.
He reaches up and pushes a strand of hair off my face, tucking it back with two fingers, and then he doesn't take his hand away. Just rests it along my jaw, his thumb at the corner of my cheekbone, and looks at me like he's trying to memorize something.
"You sure?" he asks.
It's not a performance. He's actually asking. He wants an actual answer and he will stand here all night waiting for one, which is — that's — I didn't know I needed someone to actually ask.
"Yes," I say. "Beck. Yes."
His exhale is slow. Then he leans down and kisses me — different from the porch, that one caught me off guard and was over before I understood what I'd started. This one is deliberate.He has both hands in my hair and he takes his time about it, and I feel it everywhere — the warm press of his mouth, the slight scratch of his jaw, the way his fingers curl at the back of my head like he's been thinking about exactly this. My hands find the front of his shirt and I hold on, because my knees have apparently decided this is someone else's problem. When he finally pulls back, just enough to look at me, my pulse is loud in my ears and I've forgotten what I was going to say next.
His room is at the end of the hall, which I have never been inside, and the room is surreal in a specific way while he turns on the lamp — like the house has been holding this room back from me and now it's letting me see it. Everything is neat, because of course it is. Dark wood furniture. A quilt on the bed that looks handmade. One book on the nightstand and, pushed to the back corner, a small plastic stegosaurus that Ivy must have left there and that Beck has apparently decided to leave alone.
I think I might love this man. The thought arrives without asking permission, and I decide we're going to have that conversation later — much later, when I'm less terrified of it.
Beck is watching me take in the room.
"It's clean," I say.
"It's always clean."
"I know. It's alarming." I turn to face him. "Your six-year-old's dinosaur is on your nightstand."
"She left it there," he says. "It doesn't bother me."
It doesn't bother him. He sleeps next to his daughter's plastic dinosaur because she left it there and it makes her feel like some part of her is with him. My chest does something like a load-bearing wall shifting.
I go to him. He doesn't move away, which is its own kind of answer.
"Hey," I say, standing in front of him.
He looks at me — not the guarded look, the real one — and his jaw is already doing the thing.
"Stop thinking so hard," I say.
"I'm not —"
"Beck." I put my hands flat on his chest. "It's okay to want this."
He goes still. Looks at me for a long moment. Then something in the set of his shoulders shifts, fractionally, like a load he's been carrying getting set down.
"I know," he says, and his voice is quieter than usual.
"Then stop being so careful about it."
His mouth curves at the corner. "You're very bossy."
"I'm helpful," I say. "There's a difference."
