Page 74 of How To Not Need You

I read it anyway. I give it everything I have. Voices. Accents. Dramatic pauses. I make the sound effects. I commit to this book with the same intensity I bring to client presentations that pay my rent, because Tilly is watching me with wide, delighted eyes, her small body pressed against my side, and the sound of her laughter, real, unfiltered, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and honest, is worth every second of dignity I’m sacrificing.

By the time I reach the final page, where the pigtailed heroine finally, triumphantly, proves that girls do indeed fart and it is glorious, Tilly is clutching her stomach and wheezing with laughter. I close the book with a flourish.

“That,” I announce, “is going on everyone’s Christmas list.”

“Even Luca’s?”

“Especially Luca’s.”

She giggles. Settles deeper into the couch, her head finding the spot where my arm meets my shoulder. The blanket is pulled up to her chin. Her eyes are starting to get heavy.

“Time for bed, princess,” I say, picking her up without a thought. She curls up with her head in the crook of my neck. By the time I get her into her bed she is half asleep.

I move to stand. One hand on the her mattress, ready to push myself up, to move back to the lounge and wait for Jake to come back.

“Don’t go.”

Two words erase any of my intentions.

I look at her. Tilly’s blue eyes are fixed on mine, serious in a way that children only are when they’re asking for something they really, truly want. Her small hand has found the edge of my sweater, fingers curled into the fabric like she’s afraid I might disappear if she lets go.

Well.

Fuck my rules, apparently.

“Move over then, monkey.”

She shifts. I fold myself into the bed beside her, one arm around her small shoulders, pulling her against me the way Jake does. She tucks in immediately. Her head finds the hollow beneath my collarbone again and her breathing slows quickly. There is an inherent trust that knocks the air out of my lungs.

My eyes fall closed before I mean them to. The bed is comfortable. The last thought I have before sleep takes me is that I should text Harper. Let her know that the rules I made for myself are currently sitting in a drawer somewhere, gathering dust, and I don’t particularly care.

But my phone is on the coffee table, and Tilly is breathing against my chest, and the effort of getting it feels impossible against the weight of this quiet, certain happiness.

So I don’t move. I stay. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, staying feels like the easiest choice I’ve ever made.

I wake because I'm moving.

Which is concerning.

My eyes stay closed while my brain attempts to establish whether I've been kidnapped.

I smell smoke and feel stubble against my temple. As well as a very familiar chest pressed against my side.

Jake.

“Everyone safe?” I mumble.

His lips touch my hair. “Yeah, baby. Everyone's good.”

“Good.”

I immediately stop caring about the kidnapping. He carries me down the hallway. I surface just enough to register the bedroom when we cross the threshold, the familiar weight of the duvet already turned back, the soft grey of the walls in the half-dark, the clock on the bedside table reading something that is either very late or very early and which I don’t have the energy to decode. Jake sets me down with care, and my body protests the loss of his warmth before my brain has caught up.

The mattress dips. I hear him moving around the room, the soft click of the lamp being adjusted, the rustle of clothing, the quiet sound of boots being set beside the door rather than dropped. Even at whatever hour this is, when most men would crash into bed like falling trees, he moves with the same gentleness that makes me want to hit something and also never let him go.

Jake slides into bed behind me and wraps an arm around my waist.

My first instinct is still there.