“I was worried about you,” he goes on. “You were so thin—you’re looking better now, but I was scared you were hurting yourself.”
I…was, and I wasn’t. It took me so long to remember to take care of myself, and even today, I still struggle. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
North takes a step closer, and when I don’t flinch away, he moves even closer still. Eventually, his thigh is between my legs, and I fight the urge to sink down on it. He presses his hands to the sink on either side of my body to bracket me in, and for some reason, I have never felt safer.
“I liked being able to help take care of you,” he murmurs. “I just assumed you didn’t like me.”
My head is spinning.
“The other day, when you and I—ah…” I start.
“In your bedroom or at the station?” he murmurs.
I flush. “Either. Both.”
He hums, dipping his head low, his lips brushing the edge of my jaw. “What about it?”
“Was it pity? Or…”
“Or,” he says before I can finish. “Definitely or.”
Closing my eyes, I take a breath and try to be brave. If this is it—if he’s offering me this thing I have wanted now for too long—I need to let myself reach for it. To take this moment. This gift. I need to be bold in ways I’ve never been before.
“I wanted to kiss you at the station. It felt wrong not knowing what kissing you a second time would be like.”
He laughs and shakes his head. For a moment, I think maybe he’s mocking me, but then he says, “Probably like the first time. I know I wasn’t great at it.”
Is he joking? Does he not realize it was one of the best kisses of my life?
“Why do you think that?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t done that much.”
I laugh until I realize he’s not joking, and then the sound dies in my throat. “What do you mean?”
He huffs and looks away. “I never really got the chance to go through the make-out phase of being a teenager. Life was…complicated back then.”
My stomach twists with sympathy. He must have missed out on so much. “I’m sorry.”
He huffs and shakes his head again. “It is what it is. And if you regret what we did?—”
“No!” Abandoning all pretense, I put my hands on his ribs and hold him tightly. His body jumps under me, but he doesn’t pull back. “No regrets. Just…intimacy is complicated for me. It has been for a while.”
“Because of your husband?”
“And a thousand other reasons,” I admit. I don’t want to get into it right now. I can’t.
North breathes in deeply, then knocks his forehead against mine. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
I kind of want to cry because how can this man know me so well? It’s like he can read every dark, unspoken thought in my head.
His hand lifts, fingers skating along my jaw, and then he cups my cheek. “Leo, can I?—”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know what I was going to ask,” he says with a small laugh.
“I don’t care. Whatever you want, the answer is yes.” I’m surprised at how much I mean that. It’s dangerous, maybe, but I don’t care. I want to give him anything.
