"Evan." My name in her mouth sounds different now — not a warning, not a weapon. A bridge.
"I'm here," I say, and I mean it more than I've ever meant anything. More than the lies I've told. More than the promises I’ve made. More than the fears that I carry.
She pulls me deeper, and I go willingly, burying my face in the curve of her neck where her pulse hammers against my lips. The rhythm we've found is something I didn't know existed — unhurried, devastating, each movement a conversation neither of us has the courage to have out loud. Her fingers slide from my neck into my hair, not pulling this time, just holding. Just being there.
I feel her building again beneath me. It's in the way her breathing changes — shorter, sharper, the pauses between inhales growing longer, like she's trying to hold on to something slippery. Her body tightens around me in increments, muscles clenching and releasing, and I adjust — just barely, angling my hips the way she responded to before — and she rewards me with a sound so quiet I almost miss it. A whisper of a moan, swallowed before it fully forms, like even now she's trying to keep something for herself.
I won't let her.
I slow down even more, which shouldn't be possible, and she makes a frustrated noise against my shoulder. “Evan, I swear to God.”
"I've got you," I say again, and this time she doesn't tell me not to say things like that. She just digs her nails into my back and holds on.
I feel her crest. It's different from before — quieter, deeper, rolling through her like an earthquake that starts miles underground. Her whole body locks against mine, spine arching, breath seized, and then she breaks apart in my arms with her mouth open against my neck, soundless, shaking so hard I have to hold her through it. I press my lips to her temple and keep moving, gentle now, carrying her through until the tremors ease and she goes boneless beneath me, chest heaving, eyes shut.
"Hey," I whisper.
Her eyes open. They're wet. Not crying — just full, like a glass that's been filled to the exact brim and is holding by surface tension alone.
"Don't you dare say anything sweet right now," she warns, but her voice is ruined, all the sharp edges sanded down to something raw and tender.
I smile against her cheek. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Good." Her hand finds the side of my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone. "Now stop holding back."
She knows. Of course she knows. She can feel it in the tremor of my arms, the rigid control I've been white-knuckling this whole time, the way my jaw has been clenched so tight my teeth ache.
"Molly…"
"I said stop holding back." Her voice drops, rough and sure. "I can take it. I want to take it."
Something inside me snaps — not violently, but completely, like a rope that's been fraying for weeks finally giving way. I bury my face in her hair and let go, let my body take over, let the rhythm build from that aching slowness into something urgent and honest and raw. She meets me thrust for thrust, her hips rising to mine, her fingers clawing at my shoulders, and the sounds she makes now aren't quiet — they're open, unguarded, the sounds that come from a woman who's stopped performing and started existing.
I feel everything. The heat of her skin against mine. The dig of her heels in my lower back. The way her breath breaks apart against my ear in ragged little pieces that I want to collect and keep. My arms are shaking, my whole body is shaking, and I can't tell anymore if it's from the effort or the emotion or the sheer, unbearable weight of knowing that this is real and I'm going to destroy it.
She pulls my face to hers and kisses me, hard and messy, teeth catching my lip, and I taste copper — hers or mine, it doesn’t matter. Her body tightens around me again, and I groan, a sound that comes from somewhere primal, somewhere I don't have a name for. The pressure builds at the base of my spine like a fist closing, and I know I'm close, know I'm right there at the edge where thought dissolves and instinct takes the wheel.
"Molly," I say her name as if it's the only word I know. Like it's the answer to every question I've ever been too afraid to ask.
"I'm here," she says, and her voice cracks on it, and that crack — that tiny fracture in the armor of the toughest woman I've ever known — is what sends me over.
I come apart inside her with a sound I don't recognize, something wrenched from my chest like a confession. My body locks, every muscle seizing, and for three or four heartbeats the world goes white and silent and still. There's nothing — no Midnight, no June, no timer, no lies. Just her. Just the heat of her wrapped around me and the impossible softness of her hand on the back of my neck, holding me steady while I fall.
I collapse against her, and she takes my weight without complaint, her arms wrapping around my back, her cheek pressed to my temple. We lie there, breathing together, our heartbeats slowly untangling from the frenzy into something that resembles calm. The sheets are twisted beneath us. The air smells like sweat and sex and the fading ghost of garlic from dinner, which shouldn't be romantic but somehow is.
Neither of us speaks. For a long time, there's just the sound of breathing and the distant hum of someone's TV through the wall. I don't move, and she doesn't push me off. Her fingers trace lazy, absent patterns on my shoulder blade — circles, lines, something that might be letters. I can't tell if she's writing words or just touching me because she can.
I press my lips to the hollow of her throat. Her pulse is slowing beneath my mouth, settling from a sprint into a walk.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I know,” she says, hesitating for a moment before adding, “I love you, too.”
I roll to the side, casting my eyes to the ceiling to avoid looking at her. I didn’t expect to feel this way. Didn't expect the depth of it. Didn't expect her to sit me down to a home-cookedmeal and make me feel, for the first time in years, like someone was taking care of me. But she did. And now a weight has settled in my chest that wasn't there before: this is no longer a job. This is real.
Real in the worst way possible.
Chapter Twenty-Three
