Chapter Eighteen #2
We didn’t go all the way. But we went far enough that the room shifted around us, like it had been arranged for two people before and was pleased to get back to it.
Her breath hitched when my mouth found the corner of hers.
So did mine when her fingers slid under my shirt and pressed between my shoulder blades.
We found the brakes together—her palms flattening at my chest, my forehead resting against hers until breath evened. She was the first to lift her head. I was the first to step back into my body. Our breathing filled the space, the clock over the mantel ticking loud now that I noticed it.
When we pulled apart, the room felt cooler. The window breathed the night in. I searched her eyes for any flicker of regret, but there wasn’t one—only the same steady pull that had been wrecking me since Friday.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth then to my chest like she could see my heart beating too fast. When she looked away, it landed on the coffee table. On the corner of the sketchbook, a graphite fingerprint was smudged across the cover.
“Were you drawing?” I asked, nodding toward it.
A flicker of something crossed her face—hesitation, possessiveness, shyness. She reached out, slid the sketchbook toward us, and hesitated again.
“You don’t have to,” I offered. “I was just—”
She flipped it open.
The page wasn’t a full portrait. It was the side of my face—the hard angle of my jaw, the line of my cheekbone, the curve of my ear.
She’d caught the way I looked off to the side, away from her, as if I was fixed on something in the distance.
The shading made it sharper than I ever thought of myself, but I knew it was me.
She’d even sketched the edge of the henley I’d worn, the collar loose at my throat, the kind of detail only someone who’d been paying too much attention would bother with.
Something inside me sat down and refused to move. I didn’t lift my eyes from the page, afraid the moment might break if I did. “When did you do this?”
“Saturday.” She tucked hair behind her ear. “After.”
“After us.”
She didn’t answer out loud.
It resonated in a way I wasn’t ready for—that she’d seen me this way and put it down in graphite. Every line was proof she carried me with her, even when I wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do with the weight of that, only that it shook me all the way through.
Instead, I kept it where it was and let my thumb rest on the margin, careful not to smudge.
“You drew me before?” I asked, not teasing, not fishing. Just—curious. Starved.
Her mouth curved. “Maybe once.” Pause. “Twice.”
“More than twice,” I guessed, because the spiral on the binding wasn’t new, and the graphite on her fingers looked permanent. “You keep me in here?”
“It’s easier than keeping you out,” she said, so quiet I almost missed it.
I blew out a breath that emptied everything I’d been holding. “You can keep me however you need.”
She huffed something that was almost a laugh, maybe to keep herself from doing anything else.
We went quiet again, the good kind. The kind that built something instead of breaking it.
“Things are moving fast with us,” she said softly.
I tightened my grip on her hand. “But this time, we don’t let anyone tear us apart. No one gets between us.”
“Agreed.” Her mouth curved into a grin. “How was practice?”
“Loud,” I said. “Coach was in a mood. Edge work until we wanted to puke. The guys went at each other as if it were playoffs, and coach finally barked at us to dial it back.”
Her mouth quirked. “And did you?”
“Not really.” I grinned.
She liked that more than she let on. I could tell by the way she leaned into me.
“I talked to Avery today,” she said after a beat. “At lunch.”
“What about?”
“Her and Jax. And everything else.” A spark lit her eyes, sly. “Avery’s going to stand up to Chase. Jax is going to talk to him too.”
“He better,” I groaned. “It’s a blow-up waiting to happen. At least if he’s straight about it, there’s a chance they’ll get through it.”
Her smile pulled to the side. “You all have your codes.”
“We do,” I admitted. “Some of them are worth something.”
She tipped her head. “You going to talk to the guys about… us?”
“No.” It was too easy to answer. “Not yet. My friends wouldn’t say anything, but Theo could let it slip to Tori without thinking. And if she knows, Elise knows. I’m not giving her that.”
Mila’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. Elise would have a huge issue with us.”
“We need to figure out what her angle is first. Until then, I’m not giving her anything she could use to get at you.”
A car rolled by out front, tires whispering over the curb. We both stilled the way you do when you’re listening for something particular. The headlights kept going, throwing shadows across the ceiling. It wasn’t her mom, not yet.
“How long?” I murmured.
“I don’t know. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”
“Okay.” I sat forward, elbows on my knees, hands clasped, head hanging for a second while the reality of leaving this room in under a quarter hour dug its thumb under my ribs. “Then we use it.”
“How?” she asked, mouth tipping up like she knew exactly how.
“This way,” I said, turning to her again, taking in the line of her throat, the pulse under it, the way her sweater slipped off one shoulder.
I met her halfway. Her mouth brushed mine once, tentative, before she leaned in again with more pressure. Each shift of her lips felt like a decision—choosing me, choosing this. Her fingers slid into my hair, tugging just enough to pull me closer, and I set my hands at her hips, holding steady.
We didn’t push it as far this time, but we didn’t need to. It was enough to feel the way she softened—and then didn’t, enough to know she was choosing me again and again.
When we finally pulled apart, the room felt cooler, as though the air had shifted around us. I pressed a kiss to her forehead then another to the corner of her mouth because I could, because it was allowed, because her no second thoughts had undone something I hadn’t admitted was still knotted.
“We’re going to be careful,” I said.
“I know.”
“We’re going to be smart.”
“Sometimes.”
“We’re going to be partners.”
Her eyes were steady. “Always.”
Headlights swept across the living room wall through the half-open blinds, gravel crunching in the drive. I’d parked farther down the street not to be noticed, and I was glad I had.
We moved on instinct. She straightened the blanket, crossed to the door with a practiced ease that almost looked natural. I stood, grabbed my keys, and hesitated anyway, not ready to be on the other side of the threshold.
She paused with me, hand on the knob, eyes lifting. The star at her collarbone caught the overhead light in a sharp flare.
I moved quietly through the kitchen and slipped out the back door just as her mom’s car rolled to a stop in the driveway. She shifted so her body blocked the view inside from the street, and it should have been the smallest thing, but I felt it—protection both ways.
I didn’t look back until I hit the path. When I did, she was still in the doorway, half-shadow, that star glowing beneath her collarbone, a small lighthouse in the dark. She didn’t wave. She didn’t need to.
The evening air carried the salt of the ocean. The cypress shifted in the wind. My SUV chirped as it unlocked, steady and familiar.
I got in, shut the door gently, and sat with my hands on the wheel for a beat, mirroring the stillness I’d felt in the rink lot. The porch light glowed behind me. Her mom’s car door thunked, soft. Voices, low. Normal.
I wanted to shout she was mine, carve it in ice, set it on fire in the language this town understood.
Instead, I put the SUV in drive. Not yet.
Not until it was safe. But as I pulled away, I knew the truth anyway—Mila was it.
The measure of every choice I would make, whether I said it out loud or not.
I glanced at my phone where it sat in the cup holder, screen black, my reflection faint in it. I imagined her sketchbook again—the side portrait, the distant determination carved in my expression. The proof.
The road opened ahead, dark-mirrored where the last sun still clung west. I pressed the pedal and the SUV responded, steady and fast and mine. I drove the coastal road back, palms bending above, the ocean slipping in and out between houses.
And for once, the want didn’t eat me alive. It lit me from the inside and dared the world to try me.