“That this feels big,” I say honestly.
The grin fades from his mouth, not because he’s upset, but because he knows me well enough now to hear the things underneath what I say. He sets the box down carefully on the dry patch of concrete beside the door and walks toward me.
“Big in good way?” he asks.
I nod.
His hands slide to my waist, grounding and warm. “Yeah?”
I nod again. “Yeah.”
Because it is.
It’s big in the way all the best things in my life have been big. Not because they came with fireworks or fanfare, but because they changed the shape of me without asking permission first.
Two years ago, I was still learning how to want things without apologizing for it.
Now I’m standing outside an apartment building in Seattle, moving in with the man I love while he plays his second season in the NHL.
His thumbs brush over the sides of my sweater.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
I smile up at him. “I’m more than okay. No more long distance or seeing you just a couple times a month.”
Something in his face eases, and then his expression shifts into that teasing look he gets right before he says something annoying on purpose.
“Great,” he says. “Then grab a box.”
I gasp. “You are unbelievable.”
He kisses my forehead and steps back before I can swat him. “Come on, baby. We still have the kitchen stuff, three bags of clothes, and whatever was in that suspiciously heavy tote you wouldn’t let me carry.”
“That,” I say, bending to grab the tote in question, which is full of my annotated books, “is between me and God.”
His bark of laughter follows me through the front door.
By the time we get the last of my things upstairs, the apartment looks like my entire life exploded across his very clean living room.
Which, to be fair, it kind of did.
There are boxes stacked near the couch, my clothes draped over the back of a dining chair, two throw pillows Wren insisted I buy tossed onto the floor, and a half-unzipped suitcase at the end of the hallway spilling scarves and tangled charger cords onto the rug.
Grayson stands in the middle of it all with his hands on his hips, surveying the mess.
“Maybe I should’ve gotten a bigger place,” he says.
I pause mid-unpacking and stare at him. “Did you just complain about me moving in?”
He turns toward me so fast he nearly walks into the kitchen island.
“No,” he says immediately.
I cross my arms. “It sounded like you did.”
He points at me. “That was a joke, and you know it.”
I try to hold onto my offended expression, but his eyes narrow in suspicion.
