“Later tomorrow.” I push off the window. “After practice.”
I walk to my truck without looking back.
The lie I told myself all the way home—that’s not where this is going—tastes like pancake syrup. Sweet and cloying and impossible to scrub away.
Don't Ask Me Twice
Gisele
People tend to think lines are clear. Before this. After that. Safe. Not safe. But around here, the lines blur faster than anyone wants to admit. One choice becomes another. One moment becomes something you can’t take back. And the real truth?You usually know exactly when you’re about to cross it. You just do it anyway.
Playlist: “Earned It” by The Weeknd
The rules aren’t working anymore.
I realize this somewhere around 6 PM, standing in my empty salon with a bottle of wine I shouldn’t be opening and a knot in my stomach that’s been tightening since the Riverdale trip yesterday. The whole point of Operation Soft Boy was structure—containment, control, measurable progress toward emotional health.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped containing anything.
I pour the wine anyway. Take a sip. Try to convince myself that what I’m feeling is professional concern for a friend in crisis and not the desperate, aching want of a woman who’s spent years pretending she doesn’t love someone.
The word stops me cold.
Love. Shit.
There’s no walking that word back once you let it out of Pandora’s box.
I haven’t let myself think that word in years. Haven’t let it get anywhere near the careful compartments I’ve built around Bennett Foster, the ones labeled “friend” and “project” and “definitely not someone I imagine when I’m alone at night.”
But it’s there now, sitting in my chest like a truth I’ve been too afraid to name.
My phone buzzes.
Bennett:Running late. 15 minutes.
I should use those fifteen minutes to get my head straight. To remember why the rules exist, why I created structure, why falling into bed with the man I’m supposed to be helping would be a spectacularly bad idea.
Instead, I pour more wine and wait.
When he walks through the door, the atmosphere shifts.
We stand there for a moment, the space between us crackling with everything we’re not saying. The Riverdale trip changed something. The diner changed something. The moment in his car when he almost admitted what this was becoming changed something.
“Greeting choice,” I say, because structure is the only thing keeping me upright.
“Hug.”
He crosses the room before I can prepare myself, and then his arms are around me, and I’m breathing him in—soap and evergreen and underneath it, that scent that’s just him. My hands fist in the back of his shirt without my permission.
This isn’t a therapeutic exercise. This is holding on. This is need.
“Gisele.” His voice is low, close to my ear. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Dangerous habit.”
“About yesterday. About what I almost said in the car.”
My heart kicks against my ribs. “You don’t have to—”
