Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lucy
I chatter with excitement on the way home from Nora’s while Nash quietly navigates the streets, nodding and smiling, but distinctly quiet.
The lull in his energy makes me talk more—to fill the space, yes, but also because I feel light in a way I haven’t in weeks.
Maybe months. Maybe since before I left Los Angeles.
Everything in me is warm and buzzing, like I’ve been poured full of sunlight and possibility.
My phone pings. I half expect it to be Stella, maybe Gabby, teasing me about Nash inviting me to family dinner. But it’s Mom.
I groan, quietly, reflexively, then immediately feel like a jerk.
She’s my mother. Complicated. Well-meaning. Over-involved in all the wrong ways and curiously absent in the right ones. But she deserves better than my knee-jerk dread.
Been a few days. Hope all is well. Coffee again soon? Would love to hear about your plans for the future.
Innocuous enough. But that last line lands like it was crafted by a committee.
I can almost hear Dad’s voice in the background, pointing out how “irresponsible” it is for a grown woman to be couch-surfing through her quarter-life crisis.
It always comes back to the plan. What I’m doing next.
How I intend to make my life more palatable and polished to his standards.
“Everything okay?” Nash asks, without looking over.
“It’s fine,” I say, fingers tapping out a polite reply before I can overthink it. Would love to. Let me know what works. I lock my phone, then glance over at him, watching the way his profile is lit by the last gold slant of sun. He hasn’t spoken more than a handful of words since we left.
“Funny though,” I say, keeping my tone light, “I was gonna ask you the same thing. You’ve been quiet tonight. Everything okay?”
“I’m just processing.”
With Nash, that could mean anything. Maybe Bennett said something that hit a nerve.
Maybe he’s building a case against me in his mind like a defense attorney preparing for an emotional trial.
I don’t know. So I keep talking. Because my heart is too full to stay quiet.
Because I want him to share in that light.
“I really liked getting to see everyone again. It kind of felt like no time had passed since I last saw them, except now we’re all older and taller.
And you were there. That’s new.” I glance at the silent man beside me.
“It’s strange that I spent so much time with your family and never met you until now. ”
And yet it feels like I’ve known you longer than some people I’ve loved for years.
Nash flips on his blinker. His jaw tightens. “Probably for the best,” he mutters.
My stomach dips.
And there it is.
Whatever he’s processing, it’s definitely me.
Why does he do this? Why can’t we just let this be what it is? Something unexpected. Something good.
“You’re doing it again” I say, calmly, though my pulse is sprinting ahead of me. “Giving answers that don’t really answer anything.”
He pulls into his driveway and finally turns his gaze to mine. A cloud moves across the setting sun, dimming the rose gold sky, but not the storm building behind his eyes.
“Twenty-two-year-old me knowing twelve-year-old you might make thirty-six-year-old me feel even worse about the things I want to do to twenty-six-year-old you.”
I blink. Then frown. “That’s a lot to unpack.”
But I do it. I untangle the math, the context, the subtext. And when I find the thread beneath it—desire strung tight with guilt—I turn toward him, unbuckling my seatbelt and tucking one knee up onto the seat.
“I don’t want you to feel bad because of me.”
“I only feel bad when I think about losing you,” Nash replies, voice rough, brows furrowing. His eyes—oh, those eyes—land on me and I swear they pull the air from my lungs.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He looks away. “Me too.”
“Nash—”
He lifts his hands, surrendering to the ache between us. “I’ve spent years pretending I’m better off alone. Then you showed up and reminded me what it feels like to want someone so bad it hurts.”
My heart stumbles. That’s what I’ve been feeling too, even if I haven’t admitted it.
I reach for his hand. When our fingers touch, he inhales sharply like the contact physically knocks the breath out of him.
“I don’t know how to be around you, Nash. I feel better around you than I have with anyone ever, and I don’t know how to ignore something that big, but also… what happens when I leave?”
He doesn’t move away. Just stares like he’s memorizing me.
His hands flex on the steering wheel, and then, finally, he nods.
Once. Sharply. Like a decision’s been made.
“That’s the question I keep asking myself.
A question I don’t know how to answer. A question I think I might be tired of worrying about. ”
He squeezes my hand and opens his door. I climb out of the truck as well, the wind catching the hem of my dress.
We walk side by side, silent, the air thick with possibility.
The sound of the waves meeting the shore rises around us, echoing the rush in my veins.
By the time we reach the porch, I’m dizzy—with hope, with nerves, with the electricity radiating between us.
Nash pushes open the door to his house and I step over the threshold, his hand firm on my lower back.
The door clicks shut behind us.
I lean against it, heart racing. My bravery evaporates the second his back is turned. He takes a few steps forward but then stops and glances back. When our eyes meet, something in his expression softens.
“You are so beautiful,” he says, voice quiet but sure. “It’s unfair.”
The words hit low and deep, like they were never meant to stay on the surface.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Not until he does.
He crosses the room in three long strides and cups the back of my neck with one strong, steady hand.
The other finds my waist, warm and grounding.
His lips taste mine like he’s been waiting for this moment for years.
Like every second of distance was a mistake he’s finally correcting.
His kiss is fire.
Slow burn and sudden hunger.
I gasp softly, tipping my head to meet him, hands sliding from his arms around to his back, drawing him in until there’s no space left between us.
There’s no fear. No hesitation. Only heat and need and the deep, undeniable truth that this—this man, this moment—was always going to undo me.
And I’ve never wanted anything more.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, voice raw, forehead pressed to mine. “Because if I kiss you again, I’m not going to stop there.”
“Don’t stop,” I murmur in response, lips brushing his.
I grip his arms, strong, solid, then slide my hands around to his back, drawing him closer, no longer shy. No longer hesitant. No longer worried about what happens next.
His kiss burns through inhibitions. His hands, rough, blazing a path down my back, along my waist, under my dress, gripping my hips and pressing me against him. The groan that works its way up his throat ignites my core, pooling warm and molten in my belly.
In one fluid motion, he sweeps me into his arms, strong and sure, like I weigh nothing at all.
The air shifts as he carries me through the dim hush of the house, each step slow and certain, like he’s memorizing the feel of me against him.
When we reach his bedroom, he lowers me gently onto the edge of the bed, but he doesn’t follow. Not yet.
Instead, he sinks to his knees in front of me, reverent and focused.
His fingers find the straps of my boot, undoing them with quiet precision.
As he eases it off, he presses a kiss to the delicate jut of my ankle bone, soft and deliberate.
A promise. A pause. His other hand slides beneath my knee, lifting just enough to remove my sandal with a whisper of leather against skin.
Then his mouth follows—lips grazing the inside of my calf, warm and unhurried, like he’s tracing a path he already knows by heart.
Up.
Up.
Each kiss a question.
Each breath, an answer.
As he crawls onto the bed, settling between my knees, his mouth hovers just above my thigh.
“Do you have any idea,” he murmurs, voice rough and low, “how hard it’s been to touch you and not take you?”
I meet his gaze, heat blooming low and bright. “Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to be touched and not taken?”
He smiles at that—just barely—but it’s gone as quickly as it came, replaced by something sharper. Hungrier. His hands slide beneath the hem of my dress, up the backs of my thighs, dragging slow and deliberate. I tip my head back, breath catching, nerves crackling to life.
When he peels away the lace at my hips and slips it off, he pauses. My dress settles back in place, covering everything, and for a moment, he just stares. Me, leaning back on my elbows in his bed, half undressed and wholly his for the taking.
His eyes flick to mine, hooded and unreadable.
He reaches for the hem of his shirt and tears it over his head, muscles flexing, jaw set, then lets it fall forgotten to the floor. And then he’s on the bed, the heat of him wrapping around me as he hitches my dress back to my waist and buries his face between my legs.
A surprised gasp escapes, followed by a moan I don’t recognize as my own.
My hands find his shoulders, his hair, desperate to hold onto something as sensation crests and crashes.
There’s a stretch of time where everything is heat and breath and wild abandon, where I lose track of where his hands end and mine begin.
My hips lift. My back arches. The world narrows to him—his mouth, his hands, his name catching like a prayer in my throat.
Intense bursts of pleasure bloom in my body.
My hips buck as my back arches. My nerve-endings crackle and sing while my breath catches in my throat.
I cry his name and he lifts his head, a dangerous glint in his eyes and a wicked curve to his mouth.
“I like the way you say my name,” he says, voice wrecked.
He swipes a hand across his mouth and moves beside me, shedding the last of what separates us. I pull my dress over my head, toss it aside, and reach behind me to unhook my bra. It falls with a whisper to the floor.
His gaze darkens.
And then he’s on me—hands, lips, heat and hunger—every touch a brand, every kiss a vow he hasn’t spoken aloud yet.
When he finally presses into me, slow and deliberate, our foreheads touch, breath mingling.
I clench instinctively, undone by the sheer rightness of it.
Losing myself as he moves, slow and tortuous and controlled, building and pounding and thunderous.
Our bodies are a symphony. Our movement a prayer, my name falling from his lips like poetry.
We move together—chasing, claiming, surrendering—until all thought falls away and the world dissolves into sensation. And when his eyes meet mine, I know I will never be the same. Not after this. Not after him.
This is right in a way I’ve never known before.
Right in a way that completes me and terrifies me and then all thought leaves me as an orgasm surges through my body.
He keeps his rhythm, hands planted on either side of my face, forehead pressed to mine as he finishes with a groan I feel in my soul. Our breath mingles. My heart pounds.
When it’s over, when we collapse into the quiet, our breath mingled and skin damp, he stays close. One arm curled around me. One hand still planted beside my face, grounding me.
His forehead rests against mine.
We lie tangled in the silence, my body still buzzing, my heart a drum in my chest.
I wanted this. I asked for it. But I didn’t know it would feel like this, like the moment I let him in, something inside me stopped holding its breath.