"If this is you coming to me because I'm the one who knows and that makes it easier, then you need to stop. Right now. Before this goes any further." She patted his chest. "I will always care about you. That's never going to change. But I will not be the safe place you land when everything else gets hard. I can't do that again."
"That's not what this is." He covered her hand with his and held it there. "I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, and I’ve been a coward about it for just as long. But I’m done." The moment the words rolled off his tongue, he realized he’d never said them before. Ever. Nothing like laying it all out there.
"It’s only ever been you. Every woman I dated, every stupid decision I made in the last five years—all of it was me trying to find a version of this that didn't cost you anything." He ran his thumb across her cheek. "But I finally figured out that maybe it already had. And maybe you never wanted to pay that price. You've been telling me since the beginning that you never needed protecting. You needed honesty. And I stopped giving you that the day I pushed you away." He paused, taking in a slow breath. "I'm asking you—begging you—to let me start again."
More tears, but she didn’t look away, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that. Or the silence that ticked away between them.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just can’t keep?—”
“I thought about quitting. I even looked to see what other shows were looking for producers, but I couldn’t because…” her words trailed off.
He wanted to push her into telling him how she felt. Into saying the three little words he’d already expressed. But he wouldn’t do that to her. So, instead, he kissed her.
Not the brief one from his dressing room. Not the birthday party version with her family thirty feet away. This one was different—slower, deliberate, the kind of kiss that said he'd thought about it and meant it and wasn't going anywhere after it was done.
When he pulled away and dropped his forehead to hers, they were both breathless. “Tell me to stop, and I will,” he managed. “Otherwise, I’m going to?—”
“Definitely don’t stop.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. Her legs came around his waist, and she kissed him hard.
He pulled her off the counter, and she made a small sound against his mouth that was either surprise or satisfaction. He decided it was both as he walked them down the hall toward the bedrooms. He paused. “Which one?”
“Mine.”
He pushed the bedroom door open with his shoulder and kicked it closed behind them. For the first time in five years, he stopped being afraid of the thing he wanted most.
Her room was dim, the blinds half closed, so the morning pressed in as a cool wash of gray. It smelled like her shampoo and the faint trace of lavender that clung to everything in the house, threaded through with the sweet heat of cinnamon he’d tasted on her lips. He set her down, and her back met the door with a soft thud that he felt all the way through his ribs.
He kissed her again because stopping felt like stepping off a moving train. Her mouth fit his like it always had in his memory—like a thing he was meant to hold—and when her fingers slid into his hair and tugged, it cracked something open in his chest. He knocked into the dresser with his hip as he moved them toward the bed, laughing into her mouth Her answering sound was a breathy hitch that went straight to the pulse low in his belly.
“Hi,” he whispered, stupid and grinning against her bottom lip.
She answered by fisting his shirt at his shoulders and tugging it over his head. He broke the kiss long enough to help, the cotton dragging up his spine, his stomach tightening in the chill of the room. The soft, crisp slide of his own shirt on her—God—his shaking fingers found the buttons and fumbled the third. Taking a breath, he steadied, undoing them one by one, until the placket gave, and the sides fell open to bare skin.
He paused. Not to second-guess. To look. Goosebumps lifted along her ribs where the cool air licked. She watched him—he felt it—and the awareness of being seen like that, not as a reporter on a screen or a headline, but as a man inherroom, landed heavy and right.
“Beautiful,” he said, rougher than he’d meant to. The word was inadequate, and it was still the only one he had.
He leaned in and mouthed the curve where her shoulder met her neck. She tasted like heat and sugar, a trace of frosting where his shirt collar had skimmed. He licked it away on a groan he didn’t try to hide. Her hand flattened between his shoulder blades, that small steady pressure that told him what she wanted without words. He listened. He’d always tried to be fully present with her. He hadn’t always done it well.
He slid his palms up her sides under the shirt, the backs of his fingers catching the rolled hem. He relearned her like a map, following the pull of her breath, the skip of a pulse at her throat. When he dragged his thumbs beneath the curve of her breasts,she exhaled into his mouth like he’d said her name to her in a way only she could hear. He closed his hand, careful, reverent, and her nipple tightened under his palm. He pinched gently, just enough to make her arch. He felt the change in her body like the click of a lock opening.
“Bed,” he managed, a question wrapped in a single word.
She backed into it, her knees hitting the mattress. He followed, caught between wanting to throw her down and wanting to kneel. In the end, he did the complicated thing and did both—hands on her hips as he guided her back, then dropping to his knees on the rug at the edge of her bed. The carpet bit into his skin, and he welcomed it. Pushing the shirt open wider, he kissed her stomach, to the dip above the waistband of her cotton shorts. Vanilla, skin, the salt of sweat that had nothing to do with effort and everything to do with heat.
She lifted her hips, and he hooked his fingers in the sides of the shorts and slid them down, tossing them blindly over his shoulder, before resting his hands on her thighs. Her legs were warm and strong. He kissed the inside of one knee because he’d pictured it too many times not to, then higher, feeling the fine quiver under his mouth.
“Please,” she said quietly. It wasn’t a demand. It wasn’t a plea, either. It was permission.
He didn’t make her ask again. He lowered his mouth and found her with a dizzying hunger. She was wet and slick and perfect against his tongue. The first soft sound she made had him anchoring one forearm over her hips. He set a pace that felt like the way he’d kissed her. When her thigh shifted, and her heel slid along his back, he adjusted, flattening his tongue. He added his fingers when her breath finally turned thin and fast, and she reached for the headboard.
She tightened around his hand, and he felt the moment she broke. It wasn’t loud. Instead, it rolled through her like a waveunder his palm, a full-body exhale that drew him tighter into her. He eased her through it, not stopping until the tension in her belly softened and she sank into the mattress with an utterly satisfied sound.
He rested his forehead on her hip for a beat and breathed her in. Maybe the pause was superstition, or penance, or the first real act of honesty he’d managed—knees on her rug, mouth on her skin—just the two of them in the moment.
He crawled up over her, bracing on his elbows so he didn’t crush her under his weight. Her hair had come mostly down, spilling around her face and over the pillow.
She reached between them and traced her thumb over him through the thin cotton of his shorts. Seconds later, her hand was inside, stroking gently. Then tighter and harder, and his breath caught in his throat.