I felt it.
The pulse of him. The heat. The final loss of distance between us.
For a few seconds, neither of us moved.
Then my knees remembered they had resigned.
Declan caught me before I could slide. He turned me carefully, pulled my sweats up enough to keep me from tripping, and lifted me onto the counter like I weighed nothing. My head fell against his shoulder.
“There you are,” he murmured.
I didn’t have the energy to make fun of him.
My brain was quiet.
Not empty. Not fixed. Just finally down to one channel. His heartbeat under my cheek. His hand rubbing slow circles between my shoulders. The kitchen smelling like garlic and sex and soap. Tiny grumbling somewhere nearby because his humans were weird and inconsiderate.
Declan cleaned me first, gentle and unhurried, then himself, then the counter. I sat there uselessly, boneless, watching him move around his kitchen with his shirt pulled up at one side and his hair wrecked from my hands.
“I helped clean,” I said.
He glanced at the mess. “You contributed.”
“Team effort.”
“I’ll put that in the report.”
I smiled, sleepy and loose.
He came back and stood between my knees. “How’s your head?”
I took inventory slowly. Body heavy. Chest open. Shame absent for once. Fear still somewhere in the building, but no longer banging on every door.
“Better,” I said. “Quiet.”
His palm settled along my jaw. “Good.”
I leaned into it.
Then my phone rang from the island.
The sound cut through the room so sharply I flinched. Not because it was loud. Because reality had terrible timing.
Declan reached for it, checked the screen, then looked at me.
“Your dad.”
Everything inside me tightened and softened at the same time.
Cal Holloway.
My thumb hovered when Declan handed it over. I could let it ring. Call back tomorrow. Tell myself this wasn’t the time, that I was half naked in Declan’s kitchen with his come inside me and a life-changing confession did not belong in the same paragraph as that reality.
But maybe nothing about this was going to arrive at a clean, respectable time.
Maybe ready was just picking up the phone before fear made the decision for me.
Declan watched me without pushing.
