Chapter Sixteen – Crew #2
“Okay,” she echoes, more to herself than to me. “I’ll, um… make tea.”
We climb the narrow staircase one in front of the other, her hand on the railing, my hand hovering just behind her in case she slips. The building creaks as the wind shoves against it, and my heart is pounding harder than it did in the fourth quarter of any playoff game I’ve ever played.
At the top of the stairs, she turns left into her loft. I’ve been up here a couple of times—once to carry up a box of used books some tourist donated, once when the sink backed up, and she called me instead of a plumber, like I know anything more than “turn it off and back on again.”
It’s exactly the way I remember: cozy, cluttered, more Bailey than any place on earth.
Mismatched mugs hang on hooks in the tiny kitchen. A string of fairy lights zigzags across the ceiling, casting a warm glow that softens the hard edges of the storm outside. There’s a stack of books on the coffee table, another on the floor, and another serving as a plant stand.
She kicks off her shoes by the door, dropping her keys in a ceramic bowl shaped like an open book. “Make yourself at home,” she says, moving toward the kitchenette. “Tea? Coffee? I also have hot chocolate if you want to embrace your inner child.”
“Hot chocolate sounds good,” I say, shrugging out of my jacket. My shirt clings to my back, dampened by the humidity and my nerves.
She pulls a tin of cocoa mix from the cabinet, moving around the little kitchen like she’s done this a thousand times alone. I lean against the back of the couch, watching her putter, feeling weirdly dangerous and domesticated at the same time.
The kettle whistles after a minute, and she pours the water, stirring carefully. The scent of chocolate and vanilla fills the space, fuzzy and nostalgic.
She brings me a mug, fingers brushing mine as she hands it over. The contact is small. It still feels like a spark traveling the length of my arm.
“Thanks,” I say, more gruffly than I mean to.
She curls onto the far end of the couch, tucking her legs under her, mug cradled between both hands. I take the other end, leaving a respectable gulf of cushion between us, like we didn’t almost forget our own names downstairs ten minutes ago.
Rain batters the windows. The lighthouse beam sweeps across the glass, painting the room in pale arcs of light every thirty seconds. The storm is louder up here, somehow, closer.
“It’s kind of nice,” she says after a sip, eyes on the window. “Being forced to stop. The whole town will be tucked up in their houses, reading and baking and pretending they’re not stalking the community Facebook page for drama.”
I huff a laugh. “Yeah. Mrs. Delaney’s probably already posted three blurry photos of the clouds with captions like ‘Be safe, y’all’ with seventeen exclamation points.”
“Don’t forget the weather app screenshots,” Bailey adds, smiling into her mug. “With the arrows and circles drawn on like she’s a meteorologist.”
I watch her smile, the way it softens the tension around her eyes. God, I’ve missed this. Missed her. Not just the way she kisses or the way her hands tremble when she’s nervous, but the way she turns everything into a story, even a storm.
“You okay?” she asks suddenly, turning that gaze on me. “You’re awfully quiet for a guy who usually has an opinion about every play on the field.”
I roll the mug between my palms. “Just… thinking.”
“Dangerous,” she teases, but her voice is gentle. “About what?”
You. Us. How I spent years pretending this didn’t matter as much as it does.
“About earlier,” I admit. “Downstairs. About how hard it was to stop.”
Color rises in her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. “Hard for you, too?” she asks, and there’s a hint of vulnerability in the question that makes my chest ache.
“Bailey,” I say quietly. “You have no idea.”
Her throat bobs as she swallows. “I do,” she says. “Trust me, I do.”
Silence falls again, heavier but not uncomfortable. The kind of quiet that has a pulse.
“I meant what I said,” I tell her. “About wanting to go slow. Wanting to do this right.”
“I know,” she says. “And I meant what I said. About not bracing anymore.”
Her fingers tighten on the mug. She sets it down carefully on the coffee table, then mirrors the motion with my cup, taking it from my hands and placing it beside hers.
Her knee brushes my thigh as she shifts closer. “Can I sit here?” she asks, even though she already is.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice low. “You can sit wherever you want.”
She moves into the space between us, thigh pressing fully against mine now. The warmth of her seeps through denim and muscle, straight into bone.
“I don’t want to rush it,” she says, eyes searching mine. “But I also don’t want to pretend I don’t want you.”
My breath leaves in a rush. “Then don’t.”
Her hand finds my wrist, fingers sliding down to my palm like she’s tracing all the times we almost held hands and didn’t. She laces our fingers together, squeezing gently.
The storm rattles the windows. The lighthouse beam sweeps. Somewhere in town, a transformer pops, and the lights flicker once.
We don’t move.
“I’m scared,” she says suddenly, voice barely above a whisper.
I squeeze her hand. “Of what?”
She takes a shaky breath. “Of losing you again. Of… getting this wrong. Of giving you all my pages and finding out you only wanted the highlight reel.”
I swallow hard. “Bailey,” I say, my voice rough. “I’ve already seen the messy chapters. I was there for some of them, remember?”
Her laugh is watery. “You caused a couple.”
“Yeah.” The word tastes like regret and hope. “And I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out how to be worthy of a second read.”
She stares at me for a long moment, like she’s weighing something big and breakable in her hands.
Then she shifts closer, swinging a leg over my lap in one smooth, hesitant motion, settling down so she’s straddling me.
My hands fly to her hips on instinct, fingers flexing against the denim. My brain short-circuits.
“Bailey,” I rasp.
“I’m choosing,” she says, eyes steady on mine. “I get to do that, remember?”
“Yeah,” I manage. “You do.”
She cups my face again, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. “Then let me.”
Her mouth finds mine, slow and deliberate, and this time there’s no tentative edge. No testing. Just the quiet, fierce certainty of a decision made and remade.
I kiss her back, pouring all the words I don’t trust myself to say into the press of my lips, the angle of my jaw, the way my hands tighten on her waist like she’s the only solid thing in a world that keeps shifting.
Her fingers slide into my hair, tugging gently, and a sound escapes my chest I wouldn’t recognize on a replay. She swallows it with a soft, desperate noise of her own.
The storm rages outside. Up here, the world narrows to the couch, the heat of her thighs bracketing my hips, and the taste of chocolate and peppermint on her tongue.
She breaks the kiss first, breathing hard, forehead resting against mine. “Crew,” she whispers. “I want—”
She doesn’t finish, but I know. I know because it’s the same want that’s been sitting in my chest like a live wire every time I’ve looked at her for years.
My pulse pounds in my ears. “If we go there,” I say hoarsely, “I’m not going to be able to… pretend this is casual. That it’s just a storm thing.”
“I don’t want casual,” she says immediately. “If I wanted casual, I’d be at the bar making bad decisions with tourists who mispronounce ‘Coral Bell Cove.’”
“Fair.” My smile is thin, shaky. “You deserve better than my version of bad decisions anyway.”
Her hands slide down my neck to my shoulders, fingers splaying over my chest like she’s memorizing the shape of me. “I deserve someone who shows up,” she says. “Who doesn’t run the second things get messy. Who lets me be messy.”
“I’m right here,” I say.
“Are you?” she whispers.
The question lodges under my ribs.
I think about all the times I pulled back. The times I let fear and loyalty to other people dictate the way I treated her. The way I treated myself.
I take a breath deep enough to hurt. “Yeah,” I say. “I am. I’m scared as hell, but I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me to.”
Something fractures in her expression—something brittle and old. Her eyes shine.
“Okay,” she says, voice thick. “Then stay.”