It’s not followed by anything. It’s not qualified or hedged. It’s just a statement of fact delivered to a bench that I built, and the truth lands: she’s not actually looking at me when she says it. She’s looking at the wood. She’s saying it to the thing I made because it’s easier than saying it to me.
I walk toward her. She stands up. And then we’re coming together, no hesitation left. There’s no doubt left. Her hands are in my hair and she’s kissing me like she’s trying to communicate something that goes beyond words.
“Say it again,” I tell her.
“I love you,” she says against my mouth. “I’m terrified and I have a timeline and I’m probably going to panic, but I love you.”
“Okay,” I say.
We move to the workbench. Built to hold weight. Built for this. I lift her up and set her on it and she’s pulling my shirt off and I’m trying to unbutton her jeans and neither of us is moving slowly this time.
“I want you,” she says. “Right here. Right now.”
I don’t make her ask twice.
Her jeans come off. My jeans come off. She’s sitting on my workbench in nothing but a shirt that she pulls off halfway, andI’m standing between her legs and she’s reaching for me and everything I’ve been holding back is breaking open.
“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what you want.”
“You,” she says simply. “Just you. Move.”
I sink into her and she gasps and her hands grip my shoulders hard enough to mark me, and I’m thinking clearly that I don’t care who sees these marks because they mean she was here and she wanted me and she’s not hiding it.
I’m slower than she is. I’m deliberate. I’m reading her the way I’ve been reading her for months. Her eyes close when something feels exactly right. Her fingers tighten on my shoulders when I hit a particular angle. Her breath catches right before she comes.
Her collarbone is there and I’m mapping it with my mouth. Her neck is there and I’m learning the way it tastes like her skin and salt and something that’s Gabby. Her breasts are moving with every thrust and I’m pulling her closer because I want her impossibly deep inside myself.
“Don’t stop,” she says. “Please, don’t stop.”
“Not stopping,” I say. “Never stopping.”
She’s coming and it’s happening in waves and she’s pulling my hair and making sounds that are so honest they’re breaking me. She’s gorgeous. She’s real. She’s a woman on my workbench at dawn and she’s chosen me and she’s not hiding it.
I’m close. I can feel it building in my spine, in my hands, in every muscle that’s been built to do this—to move her, to pleasure her, to be inside her and know that I’m enough.
“Jace,” she says, and it’s my name like it’s a complete sentence. Like it means: I see you. I know what you’ve been afraid of. I’m here anyway.
I come with her name on my tongue and my hands in her hair and everything else falling away. All the fear I’ve been carrying about people leaving. All the careful distance I’ve maintained.All the walls I built because my parents left in a bush plane and never came back. All of it shatters.
Afterward, we’re on the workshop floor with sawdust in our hair and our clothes scattered around us like we’re a crime scene of passion. She’s laughing, breathless, a laugh that means she’s happy and overwhelmed and fully present.
“We keep finding places to have sex,” she says. “First the bakery. Now the workshop. Very romantic. Are we going to make it through all your buildings before the 60 days are up?”
“I only have a workshop,” I say. “So probably not.”
She rolls over on the sawdust. It’s coating her skin. Her back is going to be marked with dust. She’s going to spend the day smelling like my workshop and my soap and the place where she said she loves me.
“I meant what I said,” she tells me, serious now. “I love you. I don’t know what that means for the timeline or the clause or Portland or any of it. But I do.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“I’ve been building a bench for you for weeks,” I say. “I think I’ve communicated how I feel.”
“You could use words,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“I love you too,” I tell her. “I’ve probably been in love with you since you made the salmon scone and didn’t know it. Since you arrived in heels and looking like you were going to run. Since you started talking to Morris like he was a friend instead of a pest.”