I nod and swallow hard past the knot rising in my throat, thankful for the rain that hides the tears now slipping down my face.
Because today, we blurred the line.
Washed it away entirely, like stormwater running over sand. And I know what I want now. I want more than stolen time and guilt-softened kisses. I wanthim, not hidden behind rules or roles, but real and mine.
Everything I’d managed to keep safely theoretical has stopped being theoretical at all.
And I refuse to let it be again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You realize you’re not intimidating, right?”
Holden doesn’t even glance up as he ties his boots, perched on the lower bunk. “Good. I’m not trying to be intimidating. I’m trying to be unapproachable.”
“You’re failing at that too,” I say, tugging at the strap of my duffel bag, already dressed in leggings and a light blue tank. “Miserably, actually.”
He chuckles—low, effortless, that kind of sound that seems to vibrate somewhere beneath my skin. No matter how many times I hear it, it still does something unholy to my nervous system. And his smile? That’s even worse. It transforms his face in the most unfair way—pulls the sharpness from his features and replaces it with warmth, with mischief. With something that makes me forget the alphabet.
He glances up at me, eyes dark and steady. “Come here.”
I’m already moving before he finishes the sentence. Always closing distance with him, as if my body’s trained for it. He parts his knees alittle wider as I step in, and his hands lift—but pause midair, a breath from my waist.
“Can I touch you?”
“You don’t have to ask every time,” I murmur, even though part of me aches at how seriously he takes that. How careful he is with every inch of me.
“I do,” he says. “And I will.”
That earns him a crooked smile. “Yes, Holden. You can touch me.”
He exhales softly, and his palms land on my hips—warm, solid, reverent—before pulling me flush against his chest. I brace my hands on his shoulders to steady myself. His heat seeps through the thin fabric of my tank top, his breath fanning against my collarbone, and every nerve ending I have tunes itself to him like it’s instinct. There’s nothing casual about the way he holds me. It’s not innocent. It’s not careful. It’s just him, needing me close, and taking it.
This—whatever this is—is dangerously easy to want. The feel of him so near, the way his hands settle on me like they’ve been there a hundred times before. It would be so simple to let myself believe this is settled. That the hardest part is behind us. That we’ve crossed the line, and now we get to live on the other side of it.
But I know better.
I know how silence can look like comfort when you want something badly enough. I know how quickly closeness can turn to distance if the things left unsaid stay that way. Until we talk—actually talk—about what held him back all this time, about the space he kept putting between us like a wall I wasn’t allowed to climb, I won’t hand this moment over to hope.
Wanting him is easy. But trusting what this means will take more than wanting.
He pulls me in tighter, like he’s trying to memorize the way I fit against him, and every inch of restraint he’s clung to is coming apart. Slowly. Precisely. Like he’s dismantling it on purpose, even while pretending he still has control.
I can feel it in him—that low hum of tension just under the surface, running through his arms, his jaw, the way his thumb presses a little too hard against my hip. He’s fighting it, but he’s already lost.
We both have.
“Coralie,” he says, and my name sounds ruined in his voice. “When we leave this cabin, I can’t touch you like this anymore.”
I nod, but it’s a lie. A weak one. “I know.”
His eyes narrow a little, because he sees right through me. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” I say, though I’m still inching forward, like I’m allergic to the idea of distance. “I just don’t care.”
That gets me a smile, one of those breathtaking ones that looks like it slipped out before he could stop it. He leans in the final breath of space between us, his lips brushing mine once, twice, like he’s testing the edge of a cliff before jumping off it.
And then I jump for him.
