Chapter 14
I tried to slow my breathing and failed. The room felt too bright and too private at the same time. If I didn’t put words between us, I was going to climb into his lap. Seriously. I needed a thought to hold like a railing. Any thought.
I chose the mean ones I save for myself. You’re ridiculous. You’re easy. You’re plain . None of them landed. All I felt was the ache he had built on purpose.
And it struck me—how far I was from the world I usually lived in.
No crunchy doula mantras, no herbal teas or moon circles, no babies being coaxed into the light.
I hadn’t thought about any of it tonight.
Not once. Every part of me that normally found safety in rituals and calendars had been burned away and replaced by this raw, unrecognizable want.
“Do you know why I brought you here?” he asked.
“For torture,” I said flatly.
“For contrast,” he said. “The city out there. The glass. The water. Me. You. Light against dark. Hunger beside restraint. You feel more when the edges are sharp.”
“You’re making dinner into a sermon.”
“I’m making dinner into the thing you asked for.”
He reached for the bread again, tore a piece, and pushed the plate across to me. His fingertips brushed the back of my hand. Nothing and everything. A spark ran up my arm like my bones were copper.
I ate because he’d told me to earlier. Because he had fed me all day when my appetite went jumpy with whatever this was. Because I needed something in my body that wasn’t nerves.
It was insane how much I wanted his knee to bump mine under the table. It was pathetic how I hated my own need. It was electric how quickly any part of me would have traded every one of my scruples for five seconds of relief.
“You’re vibrating,” he said.
“You left me on a live wire.”
“That’s the point.” He broke the bread once more. “We’re not sprinting. We’re building.”
“You sound like a contractor,” I said. “How long does the scaffolding stay up?”
“Until I say it comes down,” he said, and then, softer, “or you do.”
The thing about being handled is that you start to forgive the man doing it for everything else. I didn’t want to forgive him. I wanted to keep the part of me that barked and paced and kept score.
And then I’d look at him. That blunt jaw that said trouble.
Close cropped blond hair that made his blue eyes look colder and cleaner than water.
The narrow scar near his mouth that turned every almost-smile into a dare.
Broad shoulders under simple shirts, forearms knotted with quiet strength.
He was handsome in a way that didn’t ask for permission.
Less pretty boy, more weapon. It wasn’t just his face.
It was the way he held a room like gravity answered to him, the way focus lived in his eyes when they pinned me.
The way he moved. My God , the way he moved.
My body kept voting yes while my better judgment filed protest paperwork no one would ever read.
It was his voice that slid in under the door I kept barred. It made promises without speaking them.
“Tell me something true,” I said, because I needed the room to be more than choreography. “Not about the letter. Not about Stephen. About you.”
He’d asked me for truth once before. Now it was my turn, and I wasn’t letting him off the hook.
He lifted a brow. “What kind of true?”
“Any kind,” I said. “Surprise me.”
He cut a glance at the window, then back. “I don’t like boats.”
I snorted, too loud in a room that loved hush. “You bring me to a restaurant that hovers over the river and say that to my face?”
“My grandfather drowned,” he said simply. “River not ocean. It doesn’t matter. Water can keep a grudge.”
The words landed low. He’d said them like they weren’t a confession. My chest still tightened around them. I looked at the water, at the black-ribbed pilings, at the way the current ran hard even when the surface pretended calm.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it, not as a reflex but as a small, full thing I could hand him across a table.
He nodded once, as if acknowledging a toast. “Now you.”
I rolled the stem of my glass between my fingers. “People always ask if watching births makes me want to be the one doing it. If I ever get jealous.” I huffed a laugh. “Mostly I want the baby to breathe and the mother to feel seen. Want doesn’t look the way they think it should.”
His mouth curved. “And do you?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “And sometimes I’m grateful it isn’t my body on the line. Both things can be true.”
We looked at each other in the thin quiet after that, and the honest, specific truths made something easier. The room softened. The air did not.
He poured more champagne. He fed me a sliver of fig and let his thumb drag, brief, over the inside of my wrist. My body jerked like he had crushed a nerve. He saw it. He catalogued it. He didn’t press.
“You’re thinking about the window,” he said.
“It’s a little hard not to when the restaurant is made of one,” I said, voice thin, trying to wrap humor around the need.
“You’re thinking about the other window,” he said.
I was. I hated him for knowing. The suite. The glass. My hands leaving prints. The city pretending not to stare. His hard body right behind me, barely touching, making me feral with not-enough.
“Eat,” he said again, gentle and unyielding. “Drink.”
I obeyed because my bones knew which orders were good for them.
The sun slid lower, then took its light with it. The bridge became a line of diamonds. The water turned the color of a bruise that would never quite fade. The candles on our table threw small circles that the glass threw back at us, multiplying flame until it felt like we were surrounded.
He didn’t talk much. He never did. He watched. He chose. He let silence do work. It should have made me feel small. It made me feel seen in a way that was worse and better than attention.
Our server came and went like a tide pool crab. Plates replaced other plates without clatter. After dinner, a dark chocolate torte landed in front of me with a small pile of sea-salt glitter and a smear of caramel that made my mouth water just to look at it.
“Eat all of that,” he said.
“I’ll regret eating all of that,” I said.
“You’ll regret not having it,” he said.
Fine.
I took a forkful. It melted. I hummed, a small, helpless sound, and watched his face go still, attentive, like the noise had been for him alone.
“You make everything sound obscene,” he said.
“Chocolate is obscene,” I said.
He laughed under his breath. The sound went through me worse than a touch.
When the plates disappeared for the last time, he stood. He didn’t reach for his wallet. He didn’t even glance toward the door. He simply held out his hand, not a flourish, not a test. A way out and a way in, both.
I put mine in his. It fit too well for comfort. He didn’t squeeze. He didn’t lead. He walked and the room moved to accommodate us.
We stopped at the glass because, of course, we did. Our reflections hovered over the harbor—me in the dress he chose, him a dark fact. He came in behind me without touching and the back of my neck went hot like it knew his breath before he gave it.
“Think about your hands on this,” he said, voice low enough to tangle with the hum of the building. “Think about how my hand felt on your throat. Think about how long I can make you wait.”
“You are a terrible man,” I whispered.
“You didn’t ask for a good one.”
The quiet carried what I didn’t say.
He turned from the glass first, and I followed, every step a lesson in restraint.
Outside, the night smelled like salt and honeysuckle, Charleston warm and sticky in the dark.
Instead of leading me toward the car waiting at the curb, Atticus guided me toward the line of carriages along the Battery.
The horses stamped, tossing their heads, leather harnesses creaking.
Tourists lingered at the edges, but one driver straightened fast when Atticus approached.
A nod. A folded bill. Then another, thicker, slipped into the man’s palm.
“Private route,” Atticus said. His voice carried enough weight that no one else dared look twice. “Eyes ahead.”
The driver tipped his cap, already turning his gaze forward like the harbor lights had hypnotized him.
I climbed into the carriage, the wood polished smooth, the bench cushioned deep. Atticus sat beside me, knees wide, arm stretched along the backrest, claiming space and me in the same motion. The wheels groaned once, then rolled, iron rim over cobblestone, the rhythm steady as a heartbeat.
The city slid by, all gas lamps and wrought iron, the hush of gardens behind old gates. I should have been enchanted. Instead, I was unraveling, each turn of the wheels another tug on the thread he’d left dangling inside me.
I couldn’t breathe without feeling the echo of his hand at my throat. Couldn’t shift without remembering the heat of his palm under the hem of my dress. My body was one long ache, every nerve strung tight.
I thought about where I was supposed to be right now—under soft track lighting at The Nesting Place, standing in front of six shell-shocked parents-to-be with a plush demo baby.
I should’ve been cracking a joke about diaper blowouts and teaching the football hold with a smile that said you’ve got this .
Instead, I was in a carriage, night pressed close, thighs trembling, heart sprinting. The guilt pricked, then melted under the heat of want. I told myself women were allowed to choose desire over duty sometimes.
I still clocked the risk like a reflex. I hoped no one saw me out here, doing this.
No mother-to-be needing a hand. No vendor wondering where the clipboard girl went.
No aunt with questions I’d have to answer.
The thought nipped, accusing, and then the want burned hotter and made every accusation feel small.
Focus on the present moment , I told myself. Easier said than done.
Atticus didn’t touch me at first. He just watched me squirm. My thighs pressed together, silk clinging, breath coming in shallow bursts. I was losing the fight not to move closer, not to crawl into his lap in full view of the driver and the city.
“You’re restless,” he said finally, the words a caress in themselves.
“You’re cruel,” I whispered, but it didn’t sound like protest.
His hand dropped from the back of the bench to my shoulder, sliding down, fingers trailing heat over my bare arm. Lower, to my wrist. Then he laced his fingers through mine, turning my palm up and pressing it against his thigh. The hard line under his trousers was undeniable.
Oh. My. God.
My pulse went wild. My thighs clenched tighter. The wheels rattled over stone. The driver clicked his tongue to the horse, eyes forward as promised.
I closed my eyes for a moment. This was heaven.
“You feel it,” Atticus murmured, quiet enough that the night had to lean close to hear.
I nodded, because words weren’t safe.
“Good,” he said. His hand left mine only to skim the hem of my dress, fingertips brushing the skin just above my knee. My breath stuttered.
He didn’t move higher. He didn’t need to.
The carriage rolled on, carrying us deeper into shadow. Anticipation beat louder than the horse’s hooves.
I wanted him. I hated how much I wanted him. I hated how little I cared who saw.
And when his hand finally slid higher, deliberate and slow, I nearly begged.