Chapter 33 #2
I don’t know what to say to that. Not when caring is what always leads to the goodbye.
So instead, I say nothing.
And he just stands there, closer than he should be, close enough that I can smell the faint trace of soap and old vinyl and whatever he does that makes him linger in my memory long after he’s left.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asks, and there’s something in his voice—uncertain, careful. Something he’s not used to letting out.
“I don’t know what I want,” I whisper. “Except maybe not to cry over people who left their hearts in journals or will leave because no one chooses to stay.”
He doesn’t move, but he doesn’t leave.
And that silence—his silence—cuts deeper than anything he could have said. It meets me where I’m unraveling, quiet and unintrusive, and somehow that is worse. Because it makes space for thoughts I don’t want. Hope I don’t trust. Longing I have no business feeling.
It makes me wish, and I’m too old to believe in wishes.
Or things I shouldn’t want and I don’t need.
So I talk to myself to calm down and try so fucking hard to piece together my usual cheery personality, but today it’s hard to make it happen. Not when my insides feel scraped open by ink written decades ago. I shake my head abruptly and head back into the penthouse.
New plan, I’m just going to ignore him.
I grab my raincoat, Mila’s umbrella, her jacket. By the time I step into the hallway, Alec is already there—wearing a sweater, holding his umbrella, like he knew exactly when I’d step out.
“Sorry,” he says quietly.
“For what?” I frown because it makes no sense coming from him of all people.
Alec didn’t do anything. I’m the one who, after all the time we spent together, got attached to something close to a . . . it doesn’t matter anymore, really.
“Yesterday. I didn’t come back to help you or . . .” He exhales, shoulders lifting slightly as the elevator doors slide open. “I was at Reznors’ place.”
“Reznor? Edgar’s place?” I ask before I can stop myself. My fatal flaw made me do it: curiosity.
“Yeah, his and and his partners’,” he answers. “Barret needed help and I . . .”
“You . . .?” I push, because I can sense the part of the sentence he’s trying to avoid.
“I was dealing with a lot,” he finishes, voice low. The elevator closes behind us, soft and final. “And it was shitty not to come back or at least let you know where I was.”
The honesty punches me in a way I’m unprepared for—unexpected, careful, disarming. I look away so he can’t see how it reaches places I don’t let anyone touch.
“It’s fine. We’re just—”
“No.” He steps inside the elevator and faces me fully. “It’s not fine, and I know it. We’re becoming friends . . . maybe more, and if I want to be part of your life—and Mila’s—I need to be mindful.”
Something shifts in the air. A quiet pull, like a current sliding beneath the surface. My body reacts before my brain can argue—leaning in, drawn forward, searching for a warmth I should not crave, but I’ve missed.
My breath slips out unevenly. His words settle somewhere deep. My palm tingles with the urge to reach for him, touch him, feel the truth of him under my hand.
His eyes drop to my mouth for a beat—just one, brief but unmistakable—before he lifts them again, as though he caught himself mid-thought and pulled back with effort.
Heat crawls up my neck.
My pulse trips into something unsteady and alive.
He’s too close—close enough that his presence slides through me without a single touch, close enough that my pulse stumbles in a way I don’t have the training or emotional stability to hide.
“Alec . . .” I breathe, barely a sound, barely a sentence. I don’t know what I’m trying to say—but he hears everything anyway.
His breath drifts across my cheek like he’s standing at the exact distance where another inch would pull us into .
. . I try not to think about it, but his mouth is near mine, near enough that I can see the faint curve at the corner of his lip, near enough that my thoughts scatter and gather again in a way that feels dangerously bold.
For a suspended second, I imagine it.
Closing the gap.
Feeling his hand at my waist.
Letting myself fall into him, into heat and certainty and a kiss that might reset my pulse.
The elevator hums around us, a low vibration under my shoes, but it’s nothing compared to the current sliding between us when his gaze drops slowly to my mouth. His eyes lift again, and what I see there steals the air right out of my lungs.
There’s heat.
Not wild or careless. Controlled. Intent.
A wanting he tries to blink away but can’t, no matter how disciplined he pretends to be.
There’s something intentional in the tension along his jaw, in the faint exhale that slips out of him, in the way his eyes linger on my mouth for a beat he doesn’t allow himself to shorten—like he’s memorizing it for a moment he won’t let himself take.
It feels like he’s touching me without moving.
A low awareness rolls through me—deep in my stomach, low in my spine—answering him before I can hide it. My knees go soft. My pulse stumbles. And I swear his eyes darken just a fraction, as if he feels every bit of it just like I do.
For a heartbeat, there’s only us. The distance between our mouths. The almost of it.
Then—the elevator doors slide open with a rush of cool air, breaking whatever held us suspended. We step out at the same time like two people pretending we weren’t seconds away from crossing a line we’re both terrified to name.
“We need to talk,” Alec mutters as we step out of the building. His voice is still rough, like it’s recovering from the elevator—or maybe from the restraint it took not to kiss me in it.
“I don’t think we do,” I say too fast, pasting on a smile as we pass Martin, who nods like this is just any other Tuesday.
It’s not.
I’m still trying to figure out if I hallucinated that almost-kiss or if my hormones are so dangerously deprived that proximity now counts as foreplay. My brain’s short-circuiting like a faulty cassette deck, looping the same question: What if I had kissed him? What if he had kissed me?
Absolutely not. No. Nope.
No woman in my position—widow, single mother, emotionally glued together with caffeine, chocolate, and denial—should even be considering catching feelings for someone like Alec Horvath.
A celebrity, no less. A man with brooding eyes, a tragic past, and a voice that makes parts of me I thought were dormant sit up and beg.
It’s not just reckless. It’s stupid.
I am not that woman.
I am the woman who organizes her trauma into manageable bullet points. The woman who makes laminated lists and pretends she doesn’t cry in bathroom stalls. The woman who lies to everyone with a smile and a well-rehearsed, “I’m fine.”
“I understand you’re juggling a lot,” Alec says carefully. “And I don’t want to push my agenda. Not that I have one perfectly defined, but—”
“There’s an agenda?” I stop walking and face him, arms crossing automatically. “What, you want us gone? Going to slide a check under my door like a romantic eviction notice?”
“Don’t interrupt me,” he says softly, but it hits like a pause I wasn’t expecting.
I blink.
“If we want this to work, we need better communication. Interrupting doesn’t help.”
“Work?” I repeat. “What exactly is supposed to work here?”
“You and me,” he says.
My brain does a backflip. Or maybe the sidewalk shifts. Hard to tell. I’m losing all my equilibrium here.
He exhales, like the words taste strange coming out. “Look, I’m having a lot of internal conflict because I don’t like getting attached—”
I roll my eyes and open my mouth.
He points at me before I can speak. “My turn. Then you talk.”
I glare but bite my tongue. Barely.
“I’m not only attracted to you,” he says.
“I’m falling. Slowly. Probably against my better judgment.
But it’s happening, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not.
I want you to know exactly where I stand—so when I try to sweep you off your feet, it won’t be by accident.
And I’ll be mindful of Mila while I do it. ”
I stare at him.
Like, actually stare at him.
“You just . . .” I blink. “You said it like you were announcing a fender bender.”
“It isn’t a declaration,” he argues, like that helps. “It’s a warning.”
“A warning,” I repeat, because my brain is too short-staffed to compute any of this.
“Yes.” He steps a little closer. “I’m telling you I’m here.
That I’m not going to hurt you. That I’ll show up—fully.
Not as the guy I was before. The version of me that used silence as a weapon and treated people like they were invisible.
” His voice softens. “I’m trying to be someone who doesn’t run.
Even when it’s hard. Even when I’m too fucking scared. ”
Something in me splinters a little.
My breath hitches, but I mask it by looking away. Not that it helps. Not when I can still feel him in the space between us. Not when everything inside me is shouting Don’t do this! while simultaneously wondering what he smells like up close.
And me?
God.
I don’t sway into the arms of tragic musicians and whisper about second chances.
I’m the girl who picks up what’s broken. Who volunteers to carry the ruins so no one else has to?
But this man?
He’s offering a future I stopped believing in. One stitched with quiet mornings and music that isn’t trying to outrun itself.
And I don’t know if I’m brave enough to reach for it.
I cross my arms tighter, like maybe if I hold myself close enough, I won’t do something impulsive—like touch his mouth or ask him to repeat it, but this time slower, softer, with his hand on my waist.
“I don’t need anyone to save me,” I murmur, though it sounds hollow even to my own ears.
“I know,” he says. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Then—like it’s the easiest thing in the world—he leans forward and kisses the tip of my nose. The contact is brief. Barely there. But my lungs stutter like they forgot how to work.
“Let’s pick up Mila,” he says, threading his fingers through mine like it’s normal. Like we’re something. “We can talk more later.”
I don’t move.
“You can’t just warn me that you’re . . . what was it?” My voice hitches. “‘Falling?’ Like it’s a weather update?”
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t smile. His answer is quiet. Factual.
“That’s what it feels like,” he says. “And I thought you should know before I do something confusing. Like show up more. Or . . . look at you too long. Or care too much and not realize I’m doing it out loud.”
Something in me pulls taut, an invisible thread catching between who I’ve been and who I almost remember how to be.
“Let’s go, Mara. We don’t want to be late,” he reminds me.
And that’s how I end up walking down the street, hand in hand with a man who just told me he’s falling for me.
And all I can think is:
What the fuck just happened?
Because I can’t lie. I want this. The feel of his hand in mine, the ease in his voice when he says we, the notion that someone might choose me with all my fault lines showing.
But want doesn’t guarantee safety.
Want has a history of slipping through my fingers the second I start to believe in it.
What if I lean in—and he pulls away?
What if I let this in, let him in, and the ground shifts beneath me again?
What if this isn’t another heartbreak waiting to happen?
What if it’s real—and I ruin it by being too afraid to try?
I don’t look at him. I can’t.
Because if I do, I might say yes to things I’ve spent years pretending I don’t need.
And I don’t know what’s more terrifying—letting him go . . . or letting him stay.