Chapter 41
BLAKE
I know the time because the clock's right there and I've been staring at it for two hours. Could've been in the workshop. Could've done something useful. Instead I'm here, lying in the dark like an asshole, not thinking about the text she sent last night.
Staying at my place tonight. Goodnight
My place.
I sent back Goodnight, Laine and put the phone down and didn't pick it up again, even though I wanted to beg her to come back.
Footsteps in the hallway. Quiet. Careful. Avoiding the board near the bathroom that creaks.
She knows which boards creak. She knows this house better than she knows that damn apartment.
My door's open. Always is now.
She appears in the doorway. Yesterday's clothes. Hair wrecked. Eyes puffy. She looks at me looking at her and doesn't say anything.
I lift the blanket.
She crosses the room and climbs in. Cold feet against my calves, cold fingers gripping my shirt, forehead against my collarbone. I pull the blanket over her and hold on.
She's trembling.
What happened? What's wrong? Are you okay?
I don't ask. She'll tell me or she won't.
"It doesn't fit anymore," she says into my chest.
Don't move. Don't react. Let her talk.
"The apartment. I went back and it just—" A tired sound. Not quite a laugh. "Cold sheets. Empty fridge. I kept reaching across the bed and there was nobody there."
My arm tightens. Can't help it. This bed is too fucking lonely without her. It's bad enough she's with Reid half the time. I don't want to lose her to her apartment too.
"I don't want to go back there, Blake."
"Thank fuck," I say.
Real eloquent, Moore.
She raises her eyes, the corner of her mouth tipped up. Red-rimmed eyes, searching my face for something.
"I need to tell you something."
"Anything."
Her fingers trace some absent pattern over my sternum. Right above my pounding heart.
"I've been careful with you," she says. "With what I say. How much I show."
I know. I've felt it. Every time you pull back, every time you almost say something and don't.
"I was scared. Not of you. Of how much I feel. Because if I said it out loud and then lost it—"
I know that math. I've been doing that math my whole life.
"I've spent my whole life leaving before things fall apart. And this — you, Reid, this house — it's the first thing I've ever been terrified of losing."
Her hand flattens over my heart. She can definitely feel it now. No hiding that. Not that I want to hide anything from her anymore. She sees too fucking much, but more than that, I don't ever want her to have to guess what I'm feeling.
"I don't want to be careful anymore." Her voice drops. Quiet and steady and certain. "I love you, Blake."
Everything just... stops.
Not the world. The bird's still going outside. The faintest hint of light's still coming through the curtains. Reid's still dead asleep down the hall.
But something in me stops. Some engine that's been running since I was nineteen — the one that says don't want things, don't need people, don't let anyone close enough to say those words because then you have something to lose — it just goes quiet.
She loves me.
I hoped. Figured she probably did. But I never got the words. That fucking hole in my chest just sat there, waiting. For her. For I love you.
"I've felt it for a long time," she whispers. "I should have said it sooner. You deserved to hear it sooner."
Deserved. The word snags. Because I know what I did to her. I know the things I said. I know there were months where she flinched when I entered a room, and I earned every single flinch. I don't deserve a fucking thing.
“You're a good man, Blake. You would never hurt me. I know that."
I did hurt you. You know I did.
But she's looking at me like that's not the whole story. Like the man I was back then isn't the sum total of what I am. Like she weighed everything — the damage and the repair, the breaking and the building — and decided I was worth saying these words to.
She's so fucking brave. I don't deserve her.
Take it anyway, you idiot. For once in your goddamn life, take it.
My hand finds her face. Pushes the hair back from her temple. She's stopped trembling.
"Laine." Wrecked. My voice is completely wrecked. "I—"
"You don't have to say it back. I know you—"
"Shut up." Gentle. Almost laughing because my eyes are burning and if I don't laugh I'm going to lose it entirely. "I love you. You know I love you. But hearing you say it—"
Hearing you say it means you chose this. Chose me. Not out of obligation or momentum or because Reid comes with the package. You looked at everything I am — the damage, the guilt, the nights I can't sleep, the mornings I can't talk — and you said the words anyway.
I can't get any of that out. My throat's closed. The words are all jammed up.
She sees it. Reads it on my face the way she always does.
"I know," she whispers. Presses her lips to my jaw. "I know."
I pull her closer. Bury my face in her hair. Hold on.
She loves me.
I'm not going to get used to that. Maybe not ever. Maybe every time she says it, it'll hit like this — sudden and enormous and terrifying in the best possible way.
She loves me. And she's not going back to that apartment. She's in this for real.
The bird starts up again outside the window. The light shifts from gray to gold. Down the hall, Reid's alarm goes off — muffled, distant, followed by a groan and the thud of a hand hitting the nightstand.
Normal sounds. Morning sounds. The sounds of a house with people in it.
She's already falling asleep. I can feel it — her breathing evening out, her grip loosening, her weight settling into me like I'm something solid. Something that'll hold.
I press my mouth to the top of her head.