She nodded. “But what about your furniture? Your paintings? If you started charging what they’re worth—”
He shook his head firmly. “I can’t count on that. I can’t build my life around it.”
For some reason, that comment scraped over her, leaving her feeling raw. “What do you want to build it around, then?”
He was silent, one hand moving to stroke her hair. “Family, I guess,” he said, finally.
“Like, your mom and sisters? Or your own?”
“Both,” he said. “That’s the other thing. I was always so freaked out about accidentally getting someone pregnant before I was ready. But I’m thirty, and I’mstillnot ready. I don’t know if I could ever feel stable enough here.”
It was her turn to be silent now, but he seemed to sense the direction her thoughts were drifting. He glanced down at her. “What about you? Do you ever want to, uh…be pregnant?”
“I have been pregnant,” she said quietly. “When I was twenty.”
“Oh,” said Niko. “I’m sorry.” He paused, clearly trying to get a read on her reaction. “Or…am I sorry?”
“No, it’s okay. It was a fling with this horrible guy; we werealready over by the time I found out. Having that baby would’ve been a disaster for, like, ten different reasons, so it was an easy decision. Honestly, I don’t think about it much anymore, but it was not fun to deal with at the time, obviously.” She shifted her head so she was more fully on his chest, his arm coming around her shoulder, pulling her closer.
“Other than that…I don’t know. I think for most of my life it was very clear I wasn’t in a place to be a good mom, and I never thought much about it beyond that. Maybe I’d be better equipped for it now, but it feels like the clock is running down on my chance to make a decision either way. Right now, I just want to be the best aunt I can be.”
As soon as she said it, the reminder of her altercation with Olivia crashed over her in a jolt, so intensely that she sat upright. “Oh, shit,” she said, one hand braced against the floor, the other still on his chest. “I forgot to tell you. Dev and Olivia know about us.”
Niko sat up, too, instantly alert. “You told them?”
She shook her head. “No. She figured it out. From how we were together during the pageant.”
He winced, running his hand through his hair. “Were we that obvious? No one else said anything to me.”
“I think only to her. I hope. But I guess it doesn’t really matter if everyone knows now. I’m sure they all think we’ve been sleeping together for months, anyway.”
They were sitting hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, and he reached down to take her hand. “And she was upset? What did she say?”
“Not much. She stormed off before we could really have it out, which is probably a good thing.”
His mouth set in an unhappy line. “I hate that it has to be like this. Why can’t they just be happy if we’re happy?”
“They’re just worried we’re setting ourselves up to get hurt. Which…” She met his gaze. “I don’t think they’re wrong about that.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his gaze dropping to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly.
“So what does that mean?”
She brought her hand to his face, gently tilting his jaw until their eyes met again.
“If we keep going like this, it’s going to be really fucking hard to walk away. I know we talked about that going in, but…it feels a lot more real now.”
He swallowed hard, his eyes searching her face. “So you…do you…should we stop this now? Before it hurts?”
Even though that exact thought had been bouncing around her mind all evening, hearing him say it made her stomach do a queasy flip.
An hour ago, she’d been so sure it was the right thing to do. But her conversation with Nora had been enough to sow some well-placed seeds of doubt. And now, looking into his eyes, she had the creeping sensation that those seeds had already taken deep root, vines tangling and tightening around them, impossible to escape.
They were already in too deep. The only choice was to see this through to the bitter end, clinging to every last bit of sweetness along the way.
She dropped her hand down to interlace with his again. “Niko,” she said, her voice breaking, bringing the back of his palm to press flat against her chest, where her sternum was bared by the neckline of her dress. “It’s too late for that.”
Before he could say anything, she threaded the fingers of her other hand in his hair and closed the gap between them, kissinghim hard, and he returned it in kind, his tongue slipping into her mouth, his hand gripping her waist, pulling her closer. Before long, she was kneeling, straddling one of his thighs, their kisses growing deeper and more frantic, Niko pulling away only long enough to give sharp, greedy bites to her throat and jaw.
