Page 202 of At First Catch

Nolan goes completely still beside me. I laugh against his shoulder.

“No, seriously.” Emotion catches in my chest. “Watching you try, even when you’re scared and overwhelmed and handling everything badly sometimes—” I glance up at him. “It matters.”

The vulnerability that flashes across his face afterward nearly breaks my heart. A part of Nolan still genuinely expects people to leave once they see the harder versions of him.

“You deserve somebody easier,” he says.

Immediate anger flashes through me so fast it startles us both.

I sit upright.

“No.”

Nolan blinks once.

“Hads—”

“No.” Emotion rises sharper now. “Do not decide what I deserve for me.”

Silence crashes between us.

The marina sounds continue around us: water lapping gently against slips, distant laughter, music drifting across the bay, but suddenly everything between us narrows painfully tight. Nolan’s instinct is to love me by minimizing himself.

I turn fully toward him.

“You know what’s exhausting?” I ask.

His jaw clenches.

“What?”

“You constantly acting like loving you requires sacrifice.”

Nolan looks away first. Toward the water. Toward the marina. Anywhere except me.

And that hurts worse than if he argued.

“I’m trying not to hurt you,” he says roughly.

Emotion surges painfully through my chest.

“I know.”

The softness in my voice makes him look back at me.

I hate that he carries that fear so heavily.

I move closer before I can overthink it. Both hands sliding gently along his jaw until he has no choice but to meet my eyes fully.

“You loving me has never once felt like a burden,” I whisper.

The pure, unadulterated devotion radiating from his expression fills me with an infectious warmth. He needed to hear that more than I realized.

“I need you to stop preparing for me to leave every time things get difficult,” I continue. “Because eventually, you’re going to create the distance you’re so afraid of.”

Nolan stares at me for one suspended second so long I almost lose my nerve entirely.

“I don’t know how to trust good things completely yet.”