“Yes,” he said simply.“I know what it feels like when everything goes sideways and you still have to keep moving.”
There was no drama in it.No pity.Just truth.
And maybe that was why it hit me, because he wasn’t trying to make me feel better.He was just meeting me where I was.
I swallowed.“Tyson didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said quietly.
He nodded once.“I know you think that.”
“I don’t think it.I know it.”
His jaw shifted.“I hope you’re right.”
I hated that answer.
Because it wasn’t cruel or dismissive.It was worse; it was reasonable, and reasonable was hard to argue with.
I shifted a little closer without meaning to, just enough that my knee brushed his thigh.
Neither of us moved away.
The TV kept playing, but I couldn’t have told you what was happening on it anymore.The whole room felt smaller all of a sudden.Quieter.Like the air between us had changed shape.
“You know,” I said lightly, because light was safer, “for a guy who sleeps on couches with guns nearby and smokes out of windows, you’re surprisingly good at talking me down.”
A slow smile touched his mouth.“Is that a compliment?”
“Don’t get used to it.”
His eyes dropped to my lips, just for a second, but I saw it.And my pulse reacted immediately, kicking harder against my ribs like it had suddenly remembered I was very much alive.
Oh.
Oh no.
I knew that look.
Not because men had looked at me like that all the time.They hadn’t.But because I’d looked back at him enough in the past week to know what it meant.This wasn’t just protection anymore.Not for him and not for me either, if I was being honest.
The thought should have scared me more than it did.
Instead, it just made everything feel sharper.
I licked my lips without thinking.His eyes tracked the movement.And then neither of us said anything for what felt like a hundred years.
He shifted first.Not back and not away.Just enough to face me more fully.
My breath caught, and the room seemed very aware of itself all of a sudden.The faint hum of the fridge from the kitchen.Urkel talking too loud on the TV.The brush of blanket fabric against my bare legs.
Swift lifted one hand slowly, like he was giving me all the time in the world to stop this if I wanted to.
His fingers touched my jaw, warm and rough.He tilted my face up just a little, and my heart was now trying to murder me from the inside out.
“Swift,” I whispered.
He looked wrecked in the quietest possible way.Like he was still holding himself back, but just barely.“If we kiss,” he said, his voice low and rough enough to curl around every nerve in my body, “it’s going to change everything.”
I forgot how to breathe for half a second, then maybe a whole second because he was right.
