“Are you okay?”Alec asks, glancing over with that quiet, grounding presence he has when he’s paying more attention than I realize.
I’m not.
I’m absolutely not.
My thoughts are naked, flushed, and tangled in bedsheets with his name written all over them.
Heat climbs up my neck like it has something to prove, and I force a smile that feels tight around the edges.My pulse is in the wrong place—low, throbbing, far too aware of how long it’s been since someone’s touched me like they meant it.
Since someone looked at me like Alec does when he thinks I’m not watching.
Since I remembered what it’s like to want.
My body hasn’t forgotten.It’s just been patient.
Too patient.
It was one of the things Sam and I fought about when he left that day.He was always busy.Always exhausted.Always somewhere else mentally.And when I suggested—just once, in frustration—that maybe he was getting it somewhere else ...he grabbed his keys, said he “needed air,” and never came back.
Never.
I swallow the memory down before it swallows me.
“You know what we need?”Alec asks, yanking me out of my spiral.
My first thought—completely involuntary—isa condom.
But I say, “Popcorn?”because this is who I am now: a mother, a woman with a barely functioning filter, and a full-time resident of What-the-Hell-Is-Wrong-With-Me Avenue.“But it has to be with plenty of popcorn and melted chocolate.”
He scoffs.“You sound like your child during our time in the video store.She wasn’t happy that I make popcorn on the stove.”
“She thinks microwave popcorn is the pinnacle of modern innovation,” I say.“She’d never had it before until last Monday.It was a spiritual experience.”
“Not the point,” he mutters, clearly insulted.Technology seems to offend him personally.“I was going to say music.”
“Music is good,” I agree quickly, grateful for the shift.Grateful to not be talking about snacks.Or sex.Or how close I am to crawling into his lap like a woman unhinged.
He pulls out a cassette from the inside pocket of his jacket like he’s smuggling state secrets.
My eyebrows rise.“Do you ...collect those?”
Alec shrugs in that casual, grump-with-a-heart way he always does—like he’s unaware it makes my stomach do a small, embarrassing flip.“I enjoy making them.”
He disappears inside, and for a second, I have to force myself not to stare at his back.Or his ass.Or imagine what it would be like if he came back out here and pressed me into the wall and?—
Nope.Nope.No.That’s not who I am.
(But also, God, that man has forearms that could ruin lives.)
When he hits play, “The Sound of Silence” drifts through the speakers.And somehow it feels like the whole night shifts with it.Less noise, more meaning.More him.
And I’m in trouble.
So much fucking trouble.
“Wow,” I say.“Hello darkness?”
He arches a brow.“It’s my autumn, obviously.”
