5. Zola #2
"Listen, pancakes solve problems." She points at me seriously. "This is documented fact. But anyway, I'm sitting there drowning my sorrows in carbs when this guy walks in—and Z, I'm talking stupidly attractive. Like unfairly hot."
I raise an eyebrow. "This is going somewhere?"
"Maybe." Her smile goes shy, which is unusual for Nialyn. "His name's Owen. He's a firefighter, which is already basically catnip, right? And he sits down at the counter next to me and orders coffee and pie, and we just started talking."
"Just started talking." I'm grinning now despite the pain. "You hate talking to strangers."
"I know!" She laughs. "But he was easy to talk to? Like comfortable in this way where I didn't feel like I had to perform or be interesting. We talked for two hours. About everything—his job, my internship, his sister who's apparently a nightmare, my dreams about the bookstore."
"Two hours?" I whistle low. "That's serious conversation time."
"Right?" Her whole face lights up in a way I haven't seen in months. "And then when I had to leave, he asked for my number. Just straightforward like that. No games or weird pickup lines. Just 'Can I have your number? I'd like to take you to dinner.'"
"And you said yes."
"Obviously I said yes." She rolls her eyes. "I'm not an idiot. We're going out Friday. He suggested this Italian place downtown that's supposed to be amazing."
"That's really great, Nia." I mean it too. She deserves something good, someone uncomplicated who makes her smile like that. "I want all the details after."
"You'll get them." She checks her phone, and her expression shifts to apologetic. "Shit, I have to head out soon. Class starts in forty minutes and my professor will murder me if I'm late again."
"Go." I wave her toward the door. "I'll be fine. Declan's here anyway."
She stands, grabbing her bag from the floor. "Text me if you need anything. Seriously. I don't care what time it is."
"I will." Another lie, but a kind one. I won't text her because I won't need anything I'm willing to ask for.
Nia leans down carefully, pressing a kiss to my forehead like we're kids again and she's leaving for school while I stay home sick. "Love you, Z."
"Love you too."
She's almost to the door when she pauses, glancing back. "And Z? Whatever's going on with Declan—the thing you're both not talking about? You should talk about it. Before it gets bigger than both of you."
Then she's gone, leaving me with the coffee and the laptop and the uncomfortable certainty that she's right.
The bed feels too big tonight despite Declan's weight beside me.
He's been lying there for the past hour, stiff as carved stone, staring at the ceiling like he's reading something written in the shadows.
I've counted his breaths—slow, deliberate, the kind of controlled breathing people do when they're trying not to explode.
Sleep won't come. Every time I close my eyes, my brain serves up another itemized list of everything that's broken. The pain medication makes me floaty but not unconscious, just distant enough from my body to notice all the ways it's failing me.
"Dec."
He doesn't move. "You should sleep, love."
"I can't." I shift carefully, turning onto my side to face him. The incision pulls and I bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from making noise. "And neither can you apparently."
"I'm fine."
"You've been staring at that ceiling for an hour." I reach out, fingers finding the rigid line of his forearm. "We need to talk about it."
"About what?" But his muscles tense further under my touch, betraying the lie in the question.
"All of it." My throat goes tight. "Everything we've been not talking about since I woke up."
He finally looks at me then, and the expression on his face makes my chest ache. There's something devastated in those dark green eyes, something he's been trying to hide behind all the caretaking and distraction.
"Zo—"
"Please." The word cracks. "I can't—this is all killing me, Dec.
Being in this bed, being useless, knowing I'm going to have to miss more school and I've already missed so much and I don't know if I can catch up.
" The words tumble out faster now, propelled by days of swallowing them down.
"I hate that I can't work and the bills are piling up and I can't even stand long enough to make myself toast without wanting to pass out.
I hate that you have to take care of me like I'm some broken thing that can't function and I hate—"
My voice breaks completely. The tears I've been holding back since Dr. Reeves explained what they'd removed—what I'd lost—finally spill over. Hot and angry and full of grief I don't know how to process.
"I hate that we can't have kids."
Declan moves fast despite his earlier stillness, pulling me against his chest with a carefulness that somehow makes me cry harder. His arms wrap around me, one hand cradling the back of my head while the other settles carefully at my lower back, avoiding the incision.
"Shh, love. I've got you." His voice rumbles through his chest, low and rough. "I've got you."
"I know it's too early," I sob into his shirt.
"I know we're young and we've never even talked about it but I wanted the option, Dec.
I wanted to be able to choose someday instead of having it just—taken away.
And I know I sound ridiculous because I wasn't even thinking about kids before but now that I can't—"
"You're not ridiculous." He presses his lips to the top of my head, and I feel him breathe in deep like he's trying to hold himself together. "You're not ridiculous and it's not too early and you have every right to feel whatever you're feeling."
"But you—" I pull back enough to look at him, and the wetness on my face makes everything blur. "You might want kids someday and I can't give you that and what if—"
"Stop." His hands come up to frame my face, thumbs brushing away tears. "You listen to me, Zola. You are the most important thing in my life. You. Not some hypothetical future, not possibilities, not anything else. Just you."
"That's not—"
"Nothing else matters." His voice drops lower, intense in a way that demands I hear him. "I love you. I love you and I need you alive and healing and here with me. That's all. That's everything."
I want to believe him. Want to let those words settle into the hollow places and make them less empty. But there's still something wrong—something he's not saying. I can feel it in the tension that hasn't left his shoulders, see it in the way his jaw keeps clenching.
"There's something else." I search his face, watching emotions flicker too fast to name. "Dec, I can tell. What aren't you telling me?"
"It's nothing." But he won't meet my eyes anymore. "It doesn't matter."
"If it didn't matter, you wouldn't be lying awake staring at the ceiling." I press my palm against his chest, feeling his heartbeat kick faster. "Please. I don't want secrets between us. Not now. Not after everything."
He's quiet for so long I think he might not answer. His hands slide from my face to my shoulders, then down my arms, like he needs the contact to ground himself. When he finally speaks, his voice is careful.
"My uncle came to talk to me when you were in the hospital. He wanted to talk about succession planning."
Something cold slides down my spine. "Okay."
"He's been grooming me to take over the business when he retires." Declan's still not looking at me. "You know that. But there are expectations that come with leadership. Requirements."
The cold spreads through my chest. "What kind of requirements?"
"Strategic alliances." His jaw works. "Family connections. The kind that get formalized through marriage."
Oh.
The single syllable echoes in my head, followed by a dozen implications I don't want to examine. Marriage. Requirements. Strategic alliances. None of those words include me—a broke college student with no connections, no family, nothing to offer except myself.
"He wants you to marry someone else." I don't frame it as a question because I already know the answer.
Declan's arms tighten around me. "He suggested it would be beneficial. For stability. For the business."
"Who?" My voice sounds distant even to my own ears.
"Doesn't matter." Now he does meet my eyes, and there's something fierce there, protective and possessive in equal measure. "Because I'm not doing it. I told him no."
"Dec—"