The admission settled between them, unfinished and imperfect, but real. Holly leaned into his side, the cocoa warm in her hands, his shoulder solid beneath her cheek. The cold stayedsharp around them, and the house loomed behind them like a final boss they weren’t ready to battle yet. But here, on this bench, she let herself rest in the dangerous hope that love didn’t have to be loud to be serious, and that not every future revealed itself all at once.
Above them, the stars blinked on and off, distant and indifferent, witnesses to promises people didn’t always know they were making. Holly closed her eyes and breathed Nate in, choosing to stay here in the moment with him instead of racing ahead to everything it might cost later.
It wasn’t fixed. It sure as hell wasn’t certain. But for tonight, it was honest.
And that felt like enough to carry with her into whatever came next.
58
DEFENDING HER > DEFENDING THE NET
Nate
“She’s not a phase. She’s a fucking revolution.”
By the time he took Holly inside to bed, the house felt like a museum. The lights were too soft, the air too still, the silence curated like it had been polished by generations of people who believed emotion was something you kept behind glass. Nate walked her down the hallway slowly, matching her pace on her crutches, hating the way the pain made her mouth go tight even when she was trying not to show it.
He helped her into the guest room that felt more like a carefully staged exhibit of hospitality. It was all linen sheets, perfect corners, and nothing warm enough to be real. She smiled at him like she was fine, as though she hadn’t been carved open at dinner and expected to bleed politely.
He’d wanted to rage. He’d wanted to tear the whole dining room apart with his bare hands. But Holly had met his eyes across the table and given him the smallest shake of her head, that quietdon’tshe used when she didn’t want him to make it worse. So he’d swallowed it.
“You sure I can’t get you anything?”
Holly yawned, the jet lag and the family drama combining with her medication into a cocktail ofme go sleepy now.
“I’m fine,” she promised. “Just need to sleep.”
He moved in and pressed a soft kiss to her hair. He could tell she hadn’t been expecting it from the way she’d tensed up beneath him, but he followed it up with another just because he fucking could. Because she was precious to him, and he wanted her to know it. He tucked the blanket around her to make sure she stayed warm, and then he left the room with a gentleness that felt like betrayal.
When the door clicked shut behind him, the fury he’d been holding back surged up so hard it tasted like metal. He stood there for a moment in the dark hallway, breathing through it, hands flexing at his sides the way they always did before a fight. The old Nate was right here, twitching under his skin, the part of him that solved pain with impact, that understood violence like a native language.
It’d been so easy to let him out to play. Storm downstairs, slam his mother’s perfect kitchen drawers, blow the house wide open with noise and anger. That was what they all probably expected from him, after all. That was the version of him everyone understood.
But he didn’t.Couldn’t.Because thanks to Holly, he wasn’t that guy anymore. She’d shown him how to do better. And he couldn’t repay her for that by falling back to his fists in a temper tantrum.
So he went downstairs without slamming doors. Without shouting. Without giving anyone the satisfaction of calling him unstable, difficult, or deranged. He walked straight into the kitchen like a man carrying something dangerous in his chestand refusing to drop it until he was sure he could detonate it to maximum effect.
His mother was sitting at the island counter with a cup of tea and a glossy magazine. She glanced up when he entered, looking surprised and pleased for a moment, until she noticed the determined expression on her only son’s face. And then the performative motherly love melted away, leaving that same calm authority Nate had lived under his entire life.
A slow, familiar dread pressed at his ribs, but he didn’t soften. He chose to stand at the edge of the island like it was the Italian marble battlefield he was willing to die on. His icy blue gaze fell to the woman who’d given it to him, the set of his jaw declaring he was done being trained to jump through her hoops.
“We need to talk about Holly,” he began, his tone deceptively even.
His mother’s eyebrow lifted the barest fraction. It was the look of a woman thinkinghere we go,and it instantly pissed him the fuck off.
“Nathanael,” she started.
“No.”
The word came out sharper than he intended, but it landed clean and stopped his mother as if he had slapped her. “You don’t get to dress up your behavior in manners and pretend it wasn’t cruelty. You knewexactlywhat you were doing.”
Helene’s mouth tightened into a small, disapproving line. “I was being honest.”
Nate let out a breath that wasn’t a laugh. “No, you were marking territory. Like always.”
Helene straightened, every inch the queen offended in her own castle. “You bring a stranger into this home and expect me tosmilewhile she ruins your future.”
“Holly isn’t astranger,”Nate cut her off. This time the anger broke through properly. Not loud or messy, but absolute. “She’s mypartner.The one person holding me together for months while everyone else watched me fall apart and saidI told you so.”
