That was the thing. He’d gone from being a cocksure, arrogant jerk who’d just wanted to fuck to… whatever this was. Stepping up. Holding her without expecting anything in return. Moving with her, as silent as a shadow, because he seemed to sense she didn’t know what the hell to say. And it wasn’t the heavy, controlling silence men used when they wanted you to fill the space with apologies. He was just present, like he was proving moment to moment that he could be a safe place.
She opened the door to her apartment, which was little more than an open-plan living area, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small balcony. Nate followed behind her, but didn’t commenton anything. Didn’t smirk at the various dance shoes she had lined up against the wall by the front door. Ignored the stack of unopened mail that screamedwoman actively in survival mode.
He hovered by her kitchen table like he was waiting for permission, broad shoulders filling her sanctuary in a way that would’ve been comical if her insides weren’t still vibrating. She kicked off her shoes and reached for her purse to retrieve her phone.
“I’m ordering food,” she said, as if announcing it could stop her hands from shaking.
“Okay,” Nate replied behind her, voice careful.
She hated careful.Careful meant people thought you were fragile.
Holly yanked open a drawer, found the stack of menus she never used, and lined them up on the counter anyway. She could feel him watching her without staring, which somehow made it worse. She could feel his attention like warmth on the back of her neck.
“What do you want?” she asked, keeping her back turned like it was a shield.
“Whatever you’re having.”
Holly exhaled through her nose. “Christ.Are you allergic to opinions?”
“I’m allergic to picking wrong and getting stabbed,” he said, and there was something light in his voice, something trying to be light and teasing, but not sure about the edges of the line they’d blurred. It worked, a little. Not enough to make herlaugh, but enough to make her chest loosen by a millimeter. Enough to remind her she still had choices.
She ordered Thai. Enough for two starving people and a third imaginary witness. It arrived too fast, and she paid for it before Nate could offer. She didn’t want to owe him anything. She didn’t want kindness with strings. They ate at the tiny table by her balcony, knees bumping occasionally beneath the surface.
The city looked in, all concrete and faded dreams. Holly shoved food into her mouth like fuel, letting him exist quietly in her space. He asked a few safe questions about rehearsal, about the next week’s dance, about whether she preferred spicy or mild, and she answered like she was being interviewed for a job. Keeping it transactional was safer. Easier. Cleaner. If she stuck to logistics, she didn’t have to acknowledge that her body still remembered his bed like muscle memory. Like temptation.
Like a goddamn mattress-shaped mistake.
After dinner, she put on some garbage reality show with too many shouting contestants and too much manufactured drama. She curled up on the couch with her arms holding a pillow to her ribs like a barrier, staring at the screen without watching it. The noise was essential. It filled the gaps where thoughts could slip in, tracking Lars in with them like a smear of fresh dog shit on the carpet of her future.
Thoughts would bring rosy Tivoli lights, the bite of winter in the air and the taste of humiliation. They’d bring the feeling of being sixteen again, foreign and starving for approval, thinking she’d been chosen when really she’d beencollected.She could still hear his voice, feel the way her skin crawled when he got too close.
Holly could normally block him out. But he’d picked his moment in the studio today like a master tactician launching a pre-war campaign. He pushed at her boundaries as if making her feel small was his favorite hobby. She’d kept her face neutral, becoming the ice queen she was renowned for being. But even ice had to melt sometime.
The TV kept going, auto-playing something neither of them was watching. Holly didn’t move. Exhaustion was sinking into her like cement born from too many years spent holding herself together on a wing and a prayer. Nate sat beside her, close enough that the heat of him was a wholething. A problem she refused to acknowledge.
“You should sleep,” he suggested eventually, voice low and careful.
“I’m fine,” she replied automatically. A reflex. Her signature move. Easily the most committed long-term relationship she’d ever had.
He didn’t push. Didn’t argue. Just let the silence stretch out until it felt almost safe. Almost earned. Then, just as the lie started to settle…
“You’re not.”
It wasn’t an accusation. Holly’s throat tightened. Anger rose fast, bright, so much easier than tears. She turned toward him with a look that should’ve ended the conversation right there, the look she used on judges and exes and strangers who thought they were entitled to her feelings.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked, voice too hard for the quiet of her living room. “That I’m exhausted? That my lifeis one long list of bills and deadlines and pretending I’m not terrified?”
Nate didn’t flinch. He didn’t do that stupid thing people did where they rushed to reassure you, turning your pain into a problem they could solve so they didn’t have to feel it. He just looked at her like she was a person and not a performance.
“I don’t want you to say anything,” he replied. “I just don’t want you being alone tonight.”
The words landed in her chest like a stone dropped into water. Holly swallowed hard, clocking the humiliating heat crawling up her throat. She hated that her first instinct was to tell him to get out, to get away before she did something pathetic like accept comfort.
“I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said, and her voice was smaller than she meant it to be.
Nate’s gaze softened in a way that made her skin ache.
“Okay,” he said, like it wasn’t a burden. Like it wasn’t something he could use against her later. “You don’t have to show me anything. I’m still here.”
