Chapter Nineteen #2
I swallow and force the words out, steady. “Not like this. I’m not… I’m not doing it like this.”
Hurt flashes across her face so fast I almost miss it, buried under panic.
“You don’t want me,” she says, and it might be the most insane sentence I’ve ever heard.
I actually huff out a rough laugh. “Jesus, KitKat. Trust me, that’s not the problem.”
Her eyes snap up, searching my face.
“The problem is you’re asking me to do something that I can’t undo for you,” I say.
“Something I can’t hand back to you when your grandmother goes home, and your father’s threat is neutralized.
That’s not a favor. That’s not ‘strategy.’ That’s…
you. That’s your first time. And I am not taking that from you while you’re this scared. ”
“Scottie—”
“I’m not saying no,” I cut in, because I see the terror start to spike again. “I’m saying not like this. Not because of her. Not because of fear.”
Tears spill over before she can stop them. I tilt her face back to me with two fingers, wiping away a tear with my thumb.
“I’m not taking that from you like it’s a prop for some fucked-up show,” I say quietly.
“If I sleep with you, it’s going to be because you want me.
Because you can’t stop thinking about me.
Because the idea of not having me drives you as crazy as the idea of not having you drives me crazy.
Not because your grandmother is scary and your father is a control freak with a God complex. ”
A wet laugh slips out of her, choked and surprised. “She is terrifying.”
“I’m sure she is.” I can’t help but smile. “But she doesn’t get to dictate what happens in this bed.”
Her breath shudders out of her. For a moment, her eyes stay locked on mine, and I swear I can see every thought flickering across them—fear and want and hope and whatever the hell we’ve built between us since the day we said “I do”.
“I do want you,” she says finally, voice small but fierce. “It’s not just fear. I promise it’s not just fear. I think about you all the time. Every night we’re together, I think about it.”
Every word is gasoline on a fire I’ve been barely holding back.
My grip on her shoulders tightens.
“I want you,” she says again, and there’s no mistaking the truth in it. “I want my first time to be with you. I want it to be… you.”
My heart slams so hard it almost hurts.
“And I want that, too,” I say, voice rough. “You have no idea how much. But if we cross that line, it means you're mine, that this is real… I’m not going to be able to play this like it’s temporary anymore. I’m barely holding it together now.”
She blinks, startled. “What does that mean?
I laugh softly, bitter at myself. “It means I’m already half in love with you, and if I make love to you, that’s it. Game over. I’m done. I’m not going to be okay smiling and signing divorce papers after you get your visa renewal from PNB and then go off pretending it was all just… logistics.”
Her lips part.
I push on because if I don’t say it now, I’ll never say it.
“If we do this,” I say quietly, “you don’t get to pretend it didn’t mean anything. Not to me. You don’t get to walk away and call it a chapter. Because it will be the whole damn book for me. Do you understand that?”
Silence stretches out between us.
Her eyes shine again, but it’s different now. Softer. Like something inside her just re-arranged itself.
“I didn’t know,” she whispers.
“Yeah, well.” I shrug one shoulder, trying to play it off even as my chest feels like it’s splitting open. “I didn’t really plan on saying it out loud this morning, but here we are.”
She gives a non–comical laugh like this whole thing turned out messier than we planned.
Her fingers curl in my shirt again, but it’s not desperation now. It’s… grounding.
“What are we going to do?” she asks. “About my grandmother?”
“We’re going to do what we’ve been doing,” I say. “We’re going to show her that this is real. That we live together. That we know each other. That we’ve woven our lives together, whether we meant to or not.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “She doesn’t get to decide if we’re real. We do.”
“And if she… asks?” she says quietly. “If she pushes. If she wants proof?”
“Then we give her everything else we’ve got,” I say.
“Trips, routines, how you like your tea, where you keep your pointe shoes, the way my mom already loves you, how my dad said last night he hasn’t seen me this happy since before his accident.
We give her the truth. All of it. Except the one thing that’s yours. ”
Her throat works. “And if it’s not enough?”
“Then we deal with that when it comes and we file for a green card if she decides to make the visa renewal harder on you,” I say. “But we don’t preemptively give her your first time like it’s a visa stamp.”
Her eyes squeeze shut. A tear leaks out of the corner and tracks down her cheek.
I wipe it away with my thumb.
“I’m scared,” she admits.
“I know,” I say. “I’m scared too.”
She opens her eyes at that, surprised.
I nod. “I’m terrified that I’m going to lose you. That I’m going to have to watch you walk back into that world and pretend we never happened. But I’d rather live with that fear than be the guy who took something from you because you were cornered.”
She stares at me for a long moment. Then she steps in, sliding her arms around my waist and pressing her face into my chest.
I wrap her up without thinking, arms banding around her, chin resting on the top of her head.
We stand there for a while. Just breathing. Just existing in the same space while the world tilts.
After a minute, she pulls back enough to look up at me.
“If,” she says slowly, carefully, “after all this is over, if I’m still here, and I still want… that. If I still want it to be with you?” she asks, looking innocent and almost worried about my answer. “Will you say yes then?”
I don’t even have to think about it.
“Yeah, KitKat,” I say softly. “If you choose me without a gun to your head? I’ll say yes.”
A hint of relief briefly appears on her face. It’s small, but it’s there.
I brush my thumb over her lower lip because I can’t not touch her.
“Until then,” I add, “I kiss you when I want to, I hold you when you let me, and I protect you from scary grandmothers. Deal?”
A tiny smile pulls at her mouth. “You really think you can protect me from her?”
“Hey.” I puff my chest out a little, making her roll her eyes. “I throw my body in front of hundred-mile-an-hour slapshots for a living. I can handle one Russian grandma.”
“She will eat you for breakfast,” she says dryly.
“Then I’ll carb load first,” I tease. “Then I’ll be too big to eat.”
That gets a real laugh. The tension in her shoulders eases a fraction.
She rises on her toes and presses a soft kiss to my mouth. It’s quick, gentle, nothing like the desperate heat I know we’re capable of—but it feels like a resolution to the conversation… for now.
“Thank you,” she whispers against my lips.
“For what?”
“Grounding me when I get scared,” she says.
We manage to get through the rest of the morning without either of us mentally combusting.
I make us coffee for me, tea for her, and eggs for us both, because apparently that’s my love language.
She moves around the kitchen with me, quieter than usual, but close.
Brushing my arm when she passes behind me.
Letting her fingers linger a second longer when she hands me a plate.
She leaves for rehearsal around nine, hair up, ballet bag over her shoulder, shoulders squared like she’s heading into battle.
At the door, I catch her wrist and tug her gently back.
“Hey,” I say. When she looks up, I kiss her forehead. “We’ve got this.”
Her hand flattens briefly over my heart, like she’s testing the beat.
“I hope so,” she whispers.
Then she’s gone, the door clicking shut behind her.
I stand there for a moment, staring at the wood, at the empty space she leaves behind when she walks out of a room.
I rub a hand over my face and blow out a breath.
Now that the panic has ebbed and the apartment is quiet again, the one thought I can’t shake is this:
She asked me to be her first.
She chose me.
And as much as I meant what I said about not taking her virginity out of fear, there’s a selfish part of me that’s already decided:
If she asks me again, and it’s not because of her father, or her grandmother, or a visa, but because she wants us…
I won’t say no this time. Though if Luka finds out… he might kill me.