Chapter 20
Stars, and not just behind my eyes, but everywhere. Like somebody shook the night and scattered it over the ceiling. I’m laughing before I can help it, a breathless little bubble I don’t have the muscles to hold down.
Or… it’s a lack of oxygen to my brain.
I can’t help the giddiness. That was the best orgasm I’ve ever had. I mean, I was a whiny baby and thought I was gonna die for a moment there, but damn!
“Is that a good sign?” Dom asks, voice rough, fond.
“The best,” I manage. “Also, I might be boneless now. Please alert the authorities.”
He huffs a laugh and slips off the bed, and I catch a last, unfair glimpse of him—back, shoulders, that perfect line down his spine, and his beautiful naked ass—before he disappears into the bathroom.
The room smells of sex and good times. The sheets feel too soft to be legal.
I sprawl on my stomach and let my limbs decide if they still belong to me.
Take care of me. Psh! That man. I’m perfectly capable of pulling my jelly limbs up off this bed to clean myself up. I mean, I could… but I’m not, like, overly upset that I get to lie in this giant bed with fluffy pillows.
The feel of the warm washcloth on my hole makes me jump.
“Sorry, was it too cold?”
“No,” I laugh. “I think my whole body is still on high alert.”
He hums and works with a patience I’m starting to understand. Slow, steady strokes. A fresh towel, like he thought ahead. His free hand grasps my hip, grounding me. He’s careful, completely unhurried. It does things to me I don’t have words for.
I feel ridiculous and incredibly cherished.
He presses a kiss to the small of my back like a period at the end of a sentence, then climbs back in beside me. The mattress shifts, a solid, familiar weight. He pulls the sheet up over both of us and settles on his back, one arm out in a clear invitation.
I go right to him, tucking in with my ear over his heart.
His skin is hot and a little sticky, and his breathing evens out under my cheek.
The bedside lamp we forgot to turn off spreads a gentle glow across the room, and with it, the black ink on his chest shimmers like a black sea.
Circles, fine lines, geometry. Things I had no interest in until they belonged to him.
I tip up on an elbow. “Can I?”
His eyes come to mine, all that soft intensity that unravels me. “Yeah,” he says. “You can.”
I start with my fingers, tracing the outer ring, then the smaller one inside it, mapping the ink the way I’d map a new recipe—slow, curious, wanting to memorize.
He’s warm everywhere, but warmer where my touch lingers.
When I lower my mouth and follow the same path with my lips, he breathes in like the room just got smaller.
I take my time, sliding my tongue along the circle’s edge, tasting skin and sweat, then I kiss the center, the eye of the storm.
“Little mouse.”
“Shh,” I tease, and do it again—circle, circle, kiss—until his hand slides into my hair and just rests there, not pushing, just… keeping.
My mouth seals softly over his heartbeat.
It’s faster than mine. I like that. His palm tightens a fraction in my hair when I move down and graze his sternum.
He’s trying not to react and failing miserably—a flutter at his throat, the way his stomach jumps beneath my wrist, the way his muscles relax.
I want to give him this moment. He deserves this moment, someone taking care of him for once. I think about his childhood, wondering how many times he had no one there to take care of him, to love him.
Love. I don’t know if that’s… I mean, there’s no way he feels the same. I know we’re doing more than just hooking up, but love… My heart rate kicks up, and my whole body tingles… Shit. Either I’m having a heart attack or… Fuck… I love him.
I tamp down that crazy thought by drawing another lazy circle with my tongue. “You know,” I say, my voice gone sleep-soft. “For a stoic, you make a lot of very encouraging noises.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
“Too late.” I kiss just left of the ink and feel his heart leap. “You’re so easy to read up close.”
He turns his face toward the ceiling, the tiniest smile breaking his mask. “Maybe I wanted you to read me.”
“I’ll read every last word.” I tuck my leg over his and scoot higher until our chests fit. He gathers me in without being asked, palm spreading over my shoulder blade like a seal pressed into wax.
We lie there and breathe. I keep tracing his tattoos with my mouth—nothing urgent, just devotion in circles. Every time I finish one, I rest my lips in the center like I’m sealing a vault. He runs his hand up and down my spine in a slow touch, the kind of touch you could fall asleep inside.
“You seeing stars again?” he asks eventually, amused.
“Mm-hm,” I say. “But, like, the calm kind. Less supernova and more planetarium.”
“Good.” He drops a kiss into my hair. “I like you calm.”
“I like me wrecked,” I say into his skin, then add, softer. “I like me with you.”
His chest rises under my cheek; I feel the answer rather than hear it. He pulls the sheet higher, tucks it around my shoulder. We click in a little tighter, the way two spoons find each other in a drawer.
“I’m keeping you,” I say, eyes already heavy.
“Please,” he says, like it’s a plea. “Do that.”
I press one last slow kiss right over the center of his heart and close my eyes, breathing him in until the stars blur and the night envelopes us.
He squeezes me tight, like the promise he doesn’t say, and I don’t make him.
But when sleep starts to take me, I hear him, somewhere above the dark, murmur my name like a prayer.
I call Finn because my brain feels like a blender with the lid off—noise, flying parts, and an alarming smell of burnt rubber.
He shows up in sweatpants and a hoodie and immediately clocks the state of my living room.
Cookbook drafts fanned across the table, a whisk on the couch like it’s too tired for whisking, a tea towel draped over the lamp like it’s over being a towel.
And then there’s me standing in the middle of it all.
“Fuck! I think I’m in love with Dom.”
“Ooo-kay.”
“I mean, maybe not. I’m probably not. That would be ridiculous, right?” I say, pacing back and forth across the kitchen.
My best friend looks at me with wide eyes.
“You’re not helping, Finn. Say something.”
“Ummm, congratulations?”
“UGH!” I grunt, throwing my hands in the air.
Finn laughs, and I flip him off with no malice. “It’s scarier than fuck, isn’t it?”
“I don’t like scary movies. You know this.
Put on Halloweentown, and I’m your guy. Put on Friday the 13th and…
Nope, wait, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Nope, that’s not…
Okay, put on any other scary movie, unless it’s from the ’80s, and I won’t sleep for weeks,” I say, plopping myself down on the couch.
I pull a throw pillow over my face. “Which is what’s happening. Freddy Krueger is my feelings.”
I called Finn over because I’m having a mental breakdown. Someone stole all my recipes and got a cookbook deal, no mental breakdown. Thinking I might be in love with Dom, put me in a straitjacket, Coach.
Finn laughs and pries the pillow away. “Okay. First thing. Breathe.”
I suck in a couple of deep breaths and shake out my hands.
“Good,” he says. “Now tell me what happened—without violating my need to make eye contact with you tomorrow.”
I sit up, heartbeat in my throat. “We had friends’ night.
You were there. It was loud and good and normal.
And then Dom and I went back to his place.
It was—” I search for the right word. “Mind-blowing. Intimate. Freeing. Like someone opened all the windows. I felt… seen, and like I could breathe deeper than I even could in LA.”
Finn’s grin softens. “Okay, that’s a lot of good words.”
“But now my brain is all ‘you’re in love, you absolute clown,’ and also, ‘shut up about it before you ruin everything.’” I rake a hand through my hair. “So, hi. Welcome to my spiral.”
“Why does saying it out loud ‘ruin everything?’” he asks.
“Because if he doesn’t feel it too, I’ll just have made the family dinners awkward.”
Finn leans forward, elbows on knees. “Beck, you’ve been slow-simmering this since you came back to town. Last night didn’t create a feeling, it showed you the one you already had. Love isn’t a jump scare. That’s why it feels calm after the mind-blowing part.”
I stare at him. “You’re good.”
“I fell in love.”
That knocks something loose in my chest in the best way. I grin, helpless. “Status report, Dad. How’s life with Her Tiny Majesty?”
“Sticky. Loud. Beautiful,” he whispers. “Like living inside a drum full of honey.”
“That’s… vivid.” I hand him a beer. “Sleep?”
“She believes in power naps and character growth.” He grins. “Spencer fell asleep mid-laundry-fold and woke up wearing a bib.”
My phone buzzes on the coffee table.
DOM: Home? Also, your enchiladas have ruined me. Rude.
I show Finn. He smirks. “He’s ruined.”
My panic hides under a layer of giddiness.
ME: Home. Consider me also ruined.
ME: Have breakfast with me tomorrow?
Three dots.
DOM: Yes. Do I bring coffee, or do I trust the chef?
ME: *Eye roll emoji*
ME: Who do you think you’re talking to? Coffee handled.
I set the phone down as if it were a fragile animal, and Finn watches me in that way he does when he’s being a good friend, surveying the situation.
Finn stands, stretches. “You’re going to be okay.” He slaps me on the shoulder.
“I am very not okay,” I say, but I’m smiling.
He drops back onto the couch beside me. “Okay, game plan, so your brain stops chewing its own shoelaces.” He holds up a finger.
“One: no midnight confessions. Your adrenaline will think you’re a poet.
Just revel in whatever this feeling is.” Second finger.
“Two: tomorrow, cook breakfast—because you, my friend, speak fluent skillet. Something you only bother with when you care, like French toast and bacon.” I gasp, and he holds up a third finger.
“Three: tell him one true thing that’s smaller than the whole word love and see how he reacts. ”
“And if he drops it?” I ask honestly.
“Then we tape your heart together with blue painter’s tape and feed you ice cream. But my money says he catches it and asks if there’s more.”
I breathe. The room feels a bit less suffocating. “One true thing,” I repeat. “I can do that.”
“What do you want, Beckett?”
I stare at the cutting board before the answer shows up, simple and unadorned. “I want him in my life when it’s noisy and when it’s not. I want to tell him things and have them matter. I want the bench on his deck to have our asses imprinted into it by summer.”
Finn’s smile hits his eyes. “That’s love, babe.”
“Shut up,” I say, grinning.
He bumps my shoulder. “Text me after breakfast. If you panic, remember—breathe, tell one small truth.”
He heads to the door, then pauses. “Also… let it be good. You keep waiting for the trapdoor, but sometimes the floor is just the floor.”
I roll my eyes even though I know he’s right.
Knowing I need to distract myself, I turn back to the piles of recipes on the table. I fan them out, ink-smudged and flour-dusted, and start arranging them as they’ll appear in the cookbook to get a sense of the aesthetics I’m aiming for.
A grease-stained card slips free from the breakfast pile and flutters to the floor. I pick it up by the corner like it’s fragile.
Cinnamon Vanilla French Toast
The paper smells faintly like nutmeg and coffee.
God, I haven’t made this since my father passed.
It was his favorite. “I’m telling you, Beckett, you’re God’s gift to breakfast.” I smile at the memory, deciding to add that one to the very front of the pile, needing the man who supported me in every way to have his own place in the book.