Holly
“I didn’t expect to hear it. But now I can’t un-hear it.”
Holly honestly hadn’t meant to listen. She’d only come down for water, padding through the dark house with one crutch tucked under her arm, hoodie sleeves half-swallowing her hands like she was trying to make herself smaller. She was almost at the bottom of the stairs when Nate’s voice floated through from the kitchen. Low, rough, edged with something that made her stop cold.
She didn’t catch the beginning of the argument, or even the context. Later, if someone asked, she wouldn’t be able to quote a single sentence in full. What stuck wasn’t the conversation, it was the impact. The way the air suddenly felt thick, heavy, like walking into emotional soup without warning. And then his voice sharpened decisively.
I love her.
The words hit her hard enough to short-circuit everything. Her nervous system immediately clocked in for overtime without consulting management. Holly’s heart skipped, then boltedlike it was late to something important, and she grabbed the banister because her body had apparently decided this was the moment to betray her. Her brain offered up exactly one coherent thought—oh no, this is real—and then promptly blue-screened like the traitorous bitch it was.
There was a pause after that. A dangerous one.
I think she loves me, too.
That one hit harder than the first. Because he didn’t say it like a victory, he said it like a confession. Like something he’d turned over in his hands a hundred times and still wasn’t sure he was allowed to keep. No audience or flourish. Just hope, soft and unguarded. Nate, bracing for the possibility that he might be wrong… and daring to feel it all anyway.
Holly barely registered the rest. Only Sigrid’s voice floated up next, warm and smug and unmistakably pleased.About time.
And that was it. That was the moment everything tilted.
She’d spent her whole life learning how to survive pressure. How to smile through critique, how to soften herself to fit rooms that weren’t built for her. She knew how to be impressive. Polite. Unproblematic. What Nate had just done wasn’t smooth or strategic orsafe.It was him standing in the wreckage of his family’s expectations and choosing her without a backup plan or checking if it'd cost him something later.
He hadn’t performed love. He’dchosenit. Claimed it right the fuck out loud for both of them, even though she hadn’t said the words yet. Even though she was complicated and hyper-vigilant and had a long-standing fear of trusting men who smiled pretty and promised things. He’d stepped forward anyway,without waiting for permission or certainty, and the sheer audacity of that made something in her chest ache.
Holly hobbled upstairs on autopilot, brain lagging behind her body, still vibrating with the impact of it all. By the time she collapsed onto the guest bed, heart absolutely trying to breakdance its way out of her chest, she felt like she’d just been handed a live grenade labeledFeelings. No safety instructions, just vibes and catastrophic potential.
She didn’t want to keep pretending this was temporary. Didn’t want to keep calling it fake or convenient or doomed-by-design just so she wouldn’t have to admit how much he mattered.
Because wanting Nate was as easy as muscle memory. Trusting that wanting him wouldn’t end with her heart pulverized, her dignity in shambles, and her faith in men permanently deleted was the real boss battle. Lars had taught her how quickly devotion could turn into betrayal and rot. Nate was teaching her something new, something dangerous.
That love could be gentle. That it could be purposeful.
Lying there in the dark, staring at the ceiling and bargaining with the universe like an absolute clown, Holly admitted the truth she’d been dodging all along. She wanted to be with him.Really be with him.She was just scared shitless of how much that meant, and how much she didn’t know about how to show up for it.
She wasn’t sure how long she laid there like she could download all the answers from the ether, but when the door creaked open and Nate stepped in, she felt her breath hitch. He wasn’t justNatenow, sneaking in like he thought she was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her. Now he was everything, and she wanted to smooth out the line in his foreheadwhere he was still carrying the weight of arguing with his mother.
Holly sat up slowly, her eyes on him. He was so big, so physically strong, that it was easy to forget just how much softness he hid beneath that imposing shell. She reached for him wordlessly, everything she needed to tell him written in the way she looked at him.
Nate crossed the room in two strides, toed off his sneakers, and made sure he knew where her ankle was. Then he moved. Hands braced on the bed either side of her head, classy sweater already shoved up to his elbows to give her the perfect view of his thick, darkly inked forearms. He rested just enough of his weight on her for it to be sensual instead of comforting.
His arctic gaze swept over her face, from her eyes to her lips and back again, like he couldn’t decide whether his heart or his cock needed her more. As if he needed to find out for himself, Nate rolled his hips, using the hard ridge tucked behind his jeans to press her down into the mattress like he was barely keeping a grip on his sanity.
As though declaring he loved her had unlocked the primal part of Old Nate who wasa lover,not a fighter.
“You heard.”
She nodded slowly, eyes never leaving his.
His jaw flexed, gaze burning in a way she felt all the way down to her soul.
“I meant it,” he murmured, leaning down. Close enough for his words to ghost across her lips like a promise. His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered, and then flicked back to her eyes. “All of it.”
Holly was holding her breath. She didn’t want to exhale and disturb the way her heart had started racing. Because this? This was so fucking different to the way she’d felt every other time they’d done this. This was soft. Tender. His body was so warm and solid, weighing her down like he knew it was the only thing grounding her to the moment.
“I know,” she said at last, the tail-end of it sounding scarily like a moan. And he could have been cocky, like he had been when she’d first met him. Could have made her wait, or even beg. Instead, he just looked at her like she was something rare.Someone important.
And it was as though once he was sure she’d clocked that, he closed the space between them. She melted into him, falling so much deeper. Tongue beckoning him to meet her in the middle. It was filthy in the softest, wettest way, and Holly’s lusty moan finally escaped her only to rush straight into Nate’s mouth like he owned it.
