Chapter 40 #2
“Yes.” No hesitation. “Not all at once. I still work too much. Ask Lila, she’ll provide documentation.
” His thumb resumes tracing absently over my knuckles.
“But Elise and I taught each other that understanding someone’s ambition isn’t the same thing as protecting a relationship from it.
We kept forgiving the next late night, the next canceled plan, the next month that got too busy because neither of us wanted to be the person asking the other to want less.
” His focus drops briefly to our joined hands.
“Eventually, we had made so much room for everything else that there wasn’t much room left for us. ”
Something tender and painful moves through me.
“Wanting a life with someone and making room for one aren’t the same thing,” he says.
“I’ve got room tonight. Do you want to stay?”
His expression changes so fast it almost hurts to witness—the restraint still there, but joy overtaking it, too bright to hide.
“Stay,” I clarify, because I want him to hear exactly what I mean. “Sleep. Help me finish everything on this tray. Watch something terrible with me. Wake up here tomorrow if you want.” My thumb strokes the side of his hand. “No expectations.”
Beckett looks at me like I’ve offered him something far rarer than a mattress on the floor. “Laurel, you could’ve asked me to sleep sitting against that wall and I would’ve said yes.”
A laugh escapes me. “Why would I make you sleep sitting against a wall?”
“I didn’t say I’d make good decisions.” His fingers close more firmly around mine, the happiness still naked on his face. “Yes. I want to stay.”
He reaches for a strawberry, and I reach for his glasses. One finger against the bridge sends them slightly sideways, finally crooked after all my threats, and a ridiculous amount of satisfaction comes with it. Beckett freezes with the strawberry halfway to his mouth.
“There.” I lean back to admire my work. “Much better.”
He pushes them up automatically, so I knock them crooked again. This time his hand closes around my wrist, a helpless laugh shaking loose. “You’ve been waiting to do that all night.”
“Longer.”
“And here I thought you invited me over for my personality.”
“Your personality made the shortlist.”
His brows rise.
I let my attention wander over the black frames, his face, the shirt stretched across his chest, taking my sweet time on the way back up. “The glasses carried you.”
“Good to know.”
“You should wear them more often.”
“If this is the reception, I’m never taking them off again.”
A thought arrives that has no business making it out of my mouth. “Not always.”
Interest darkens his eyes, and the sight sends my imagination several filthy places at once. Poor man has no idea what I intend to do with all that self-control when I finally get my hands on it.
I lean in and straighten the frame, letting my fingertip linger at his temple. “When I finally stop behaving, you can keep them on.”
Silence.
Beautiful, stunned silence.
“Jesus Christ, Laurel.”
I sit back and pluck the strawberry from his forgotten fingers. “Consider that advance notice.”
We choose a nineties rom-com neither of us has seen in years and make it maybe ten minutes before Beckett starts objecting to the plot on logistical grounds. I maintain that romance has never required competent decision-making. He says this explains the entire genre.
I throw a pillow at his head.
He catches it against his chest, looks offended for all of two seconds, then sends it straight back and nails me in the face.
“Oh, you asshole.”
Whatever peace existed in the room dies immediately.
I launch myself at him; Beckett scrambles backward across the mattresses, laughter wrecking whatever dignity he had left, and I manage to dig both hands into his sides.
Nothing.
I stop. “You’re not ticklish?”
“Tragic, isn’t it?”
“You’ve gotta be ticklish somewhere.”
“That confidence is about to cost you.”
I barely have time to register the threat before his hands find my waist and I fold with a shriek so undignified it’d end careers if recorded. “Beckett—fuck—stop—”
I’m laughing too hard to breathe, shoving at his shoulders and trying to crawl backward while he follows with absolutely no mercy.
My hand finds another pillow and I swing blind, clipping him across the temple and knocking his glasses crooked.
We both freeze.
“Oh my God.”
The mistake is laughing at him again. Beckett comes for me before I can run for my life, hooks an arm around my waist and sends us tumbling into the blankets in a mess of limbs, pillows and breathless laughter.
My back meets the mattress with him braced above me on one forearm, dark hair falling over his forehead, and the ridiculousness of the last minutes begins dissolving the second neither of us moves away.
One hand is twisted into his shirt; the other rests on his chest, his heartbeat thudding into my palm.
He keeps his weight off me, careful even now, but heat gathers in every narrow space between us as blue and violet light wander over his face and disappear into the black frames I’ve spent all night tormenting him about. I straighten them with two fingers.
My grip curls tighter in his shirt when his face lowers, every stupid nerve in me convinced this is finally it, but he passes my mouth and presses his lips to the center of my forehead instead. Soft. Lingering. So achingly tender the hand at his chest goes slack.
When he draws back, he doesn’t go far. “Was that okay?”
My throat tightens. “Yeah.”
I cup his jaw, pull him down and kiss his forehead in return, lingering just because I can. “That too?”
His eyes close for a second, the smile arriving slowly. “More than okay.”
We end up stretched beneath the fake stars with my cheek on his chest and his arm around me like it has already learned where to go.
Calloused palm at my waist, soft strokes of his thumb, the steady beat of his heart.
I take his free hand and kiss the back of it. “Now we’re even.”
He brings mine to his mouth and answers against my skin, “Not even close,” and neither of us tries to ruin the moment by being clever.
Later, when the movie has become background noise and our conversation starts unraveling into unfinished stories, private jokes and laughter neither of us could explain in daylight, he tells me quietly, “I spent a long time thinking wanting someone in your life was the same as making room for them. It isn’t.
” His hand closes around mine over his heart.
“You make me want one life, Laurel. Not pieces of one.”
I don’t have anything smart enough for that, so I tuck myself closer and let him feel the answer.
Beckett insists he isn’t falling asleep right up until his breathing gives him away. I lie there inside the warmth of him, our fingers still tangled, watching constellations neither of us can name drift lazily across the ceiling until my eyes finally close too.