YOU MATTER LIKE HELL, HOLLY.
Before he could lift the next one, the whole stack slipped from his hands, skidding across the dance floor in a flurry of Sharpie-scrawled confessions. He made a strangled sound and crouched fast to grab them, cursing under his breath as cards skittered away from him like runaway emotions.
“Fuck,”he hissed. “Now they’re out of order.”
“Nate,” she said finally, trying to hold her breath so she wouldn’t laugh or cry or both. “What the hell are you doing?”
He froze mid-reach, hunched awkwardly on the floor like a guilty golden retriever who’d knocked over the trash.
“It was Sigrid’s idea,” he admitted, hoarse and rushed. “She said if I didn’t write it down, I’d fuck it up. And I didn’t want to mess this up.”
He looked up at her with wide, hopeful eyes.
“I know Isayshit wrong. I know Idoshit wrong. I just…” He exhaled hard, like most of the fight had dribbled out of him and he was running on fumes. “I didn’t want to hurt you again by saying the wrong thing. So I figured maybe, if I saidallof it…”
It wasn’t perfectly rehearsed. It was Nate, rambling and nervous and red in the face, fumbling literal cue cards like a rom-com himbo with a heart too big for his ribcage. He wasn’t asking her to fix it. Wasn’t blaming her or begging for forgiveness. He was just…trying.In the messiest, most honest way he knew how. And it hit her like a freight train made of candy hearts.
She wanted this.Him.Right here, floor-scrambled and breathless, holding a wrinkled Sharpie sign that basically saidI love you, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it yet.
“Nate,” she sighed, her heart relaxing into the way his name sounded on her lips.
“Wait, lemme finish,” he said, voice rough. “Lars is everything I’m not. Marketable. Good on paper.He says the right things, does the right interviews, looks good holding a ballroom frame. I’m the fucked-up cautionary tale with a temper problem and too many penalties to count.”
He watched her, voice unraveling thread by thread. “You don’t deserve being stuck with the guy who gets sent here as punishment. Who’s only ever wanted for his fists and his failure.” A beat, that raw emotion crawling back into his throat. “I don’tblameyou for not knowing what to say when that reporter asked you if you thought I could change, Martinez. I don’t even know that myself. All I know is… I’m sorry.”
When he dropped that stupid nickname, she could have cried with relief. It was the first real thing he’d said to her indays.Thismountainof a man, who’d held her through a panic attack, washed her hair with trembling hands, and made her laugh so hard she choked on a protein bar three times in one rehearsal. Now he gazed at her like she was the cliff and he was already mid-fall. And yeah, okay. He was a fucking idiot. But she wasn’t any better.
Her voice dropped. “You think I’d risk all this foryouif you didn’t mean something to me?”
He didn’t answer. Just shook his head like he didn’t trust himself to speak. So she did what she always did when words stopped making sense.
She moved.
Holly stepped into his space, closing the distance as she pressed her hand to his chest. Right over the spot where his heart was kicking against his ribs like it was trying to escape. Her other hand cupped his jaw, drawing one shuddering breath from him before she used her thumb to tilt his face toward hers.
“Remember what I told you about my dance partners? That we were close? That we ate together, worked together? All the rest of it?”
He nodded tersely, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak.
She leaned in. “You’re the only partner I’veeverfelt safe with,” she whispered.
She hears his breath catch, as if those twelve words had hit harder than any hit he’d ever taken. And in the stillness that followed, something shifted. Not fixed, but open enough tobreathe. Holly didn’t dare to move when the moment was so fragile. So she watched him.
The way his mouth parted, like he wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words. The way his eyes shimmered as though he didn’t know whether to believe her or brace for the moment she took it back. Her chest ached with it.With him.With the weight he carried like armor no one else was allowed to see.
“C’mon,” she said quietly, reaching for his hand. “I need to show you something.”
And just like that, they walked out. No routine, no perfect song choice. Only a woman who’d finally decided to stop running from the thing that terrified her most, and a man who was still bleeding, but finally willing to follow.
46
TWINKLE, TWINKLE
Nate
“Holly without makeup is unfair. Like, illegal. They should put warning labels on that woman.”
He didn’t ask where they were going. Because that had worked out so well for him last time, right?
