Page 53 of Only Be Mine

I didn’t fight it.

The second his arms closed around me, everything I’d been holding in collapsed. I clutched at his shirt and cried so hard it stole the air from my lungs.

“We were supposed to talk,” he said quietly, close to my ear.

I nodded against him, unable to form words.

He didn’t ask anything else. He just guided me back inside, his hand steady at my back, like he’d already decided I didn’t have to face the room full of people.

The cabin seemed to hush when we entered, not because it actually did, but because I stopped hearing anything except him.

He lifted me onto the kitchen counter, his hands careful, then paused, looking around like he was suddenly realizing what I already had.

There was nowhere private to go.

His jaw tightened for half a second, then softened.

“Hang on,” he said, and disappeared down the hall.

When he came back, the bathroom door was open, and steam was already curling into the hallway. He didn’t say a word, just helped me down and carried me across the hall. He undressed me slowly, like I might shatter if he rushed it, his fingers tender where they touched me.

When he eased me into the warm water, my shoulders finally loosened, just a little. And for the first time since I’d run back to the cabin, I felt like I could breathe.

He pressed a gentle kiss to my cheek, careful, like I might fracture under anything heavier. “Will you be okay if I step out for a minute?”

I looked up at him, trying to arrange my face into something steady. Something normal. I wasn’t even sure why I felt so sad, only that something fundamental had shifted today, that I’d crossed a line I couldn’t uncross.

I nodded, then hesitated. “You’re coming back, right?”

The words came out rougher than I meant them to. Needier. I hated that. I hated the way fear made me sound like someone I didn’t recognize.

“I mean,” I added quickly, trying to fix it, “later. You don’t have to…”

He smiled softly and kissed my hand, grounding me with the simple contact. “I’ll only be a minute.”

I watched him leave without blinking, the door clicking shut behind him. Voices murmured in the hall too low to make out and then, suddenly, a sharp thud echoed through the cabin.

They’d gone outside.

I leaned back in the tub and let my mind do what it did best. Catastrophize.

I imagined John coming back furious. Cold. Telling me this wasn’t going to work. I imagined Trevor confessing everything - the kiss, the confusion, the way I hadn’t opened my eyes fast enough. I imagined John punching him, breaking his nose, storming out of the cabin with his bag while insisting I stay because that was the kind of man he was.

I imagined losing everything in a dozen different ways.

The thought lodged deep and sharp in my chest. I guess it was a good thing I’d kept my apartment.

The bathroom door opened and I jolted upright, heart racing. John stood there, framed by the doorway, and I searched his face for anger, for rage, for something I could prepare myself against.

There was none.

Only sadness.

I swallowed hard and leaned forward, apology already forming. “John, I…”

“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, stepping inside.

The words didn’t make sense. Sorry? He hadn’t kissed someone else. He hadn’t panicked. He hadn’t run.