Chapter 23 #2
He opened a bakery bag and passed me a brownie wrapped in a napkin. I picked at it without eating.
“You need to tell Nico,” Danny said.
“Tell him what? That someone was nice to me at the grocery store and I ran away?”
“Tell him that a website published details about where you live and what your daily routine is. That you’re being followed and photographed and documented. Tell him you’re not okay.”
“He’ll want to fix it.”
“Maybe you need him to fix it.”
I set the brownie down on the coffee table. “I don’t want strategies, Danny. I don’t want PR plans or statements or ways to manage being recognized. I just want my life back.”
“You can’t have your life back. Not the way it was.” He said it gently, but it still landed like a punch to the gut. “That’s not an option anymore. So you either figure out how to live with this, or you end the relationship.”
“I can’t end it.”
“Why not?”
I thought about Nico holding me in my entryway.
The sandwiches he’d made without being asked, the groceries with the sparkling water I liked, the way he’d shown up at my door, not to fix anything, but just to be there.
The way he looked at me sometimes, like I was something worth being careful with.
He was warm and completely certain of himself in a way that should have felt like too much, and somehow, with him, I felt less alone in my skin than I had in years.
“Because I’m falling for him,” I said quietly. “And I don’t know how to stop.”
Danny looked at me for a long moment. “Then you need to tell him how bad this is. Let him help. Actually let him help, not just say you’re fine and push him away.”
“What if his help isn’t enough?”
“Then at least you’ll know you tried.”
That evening, Nico showed up at my apartment at eight, after a team obligation.
“Hey, sorry I—” he said when I opened the door. His smile dropped the second he saw me. “What happened?”
I let him in and locked the door behind him. We sat on my couch, and I showed him the blog post on my laptop. His jaw tightened as he read. He didn’t say anything until he’d finished.
“This is…” He shook his head. “They documented where you live. Your routine. Your coffee order.”
“A neighbor talked to them. Someone I’ve probably said hello to in the hallway gave them information about my life.”
“We need to call Rachel. She needs to know about this.”
“Rachel handles your PR. Not mine.”
“She can still help coordinate—”
“Nico.” I turned toward him. “That’s not even the worst part.” I told him about the grocery store. The woman. The way she’d followed me to my car.
“Did she touch you?” His voice was tight.
“No. She was nice. She just wanted a photo. To meet with us.”
“And you said no?”
“I panicked and ran.”
I could see him working through it: his problem-solving expression, the search for a move.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Maybe you shouldn’t go to stores alone. I could come with you, or Danny could—”
“Nico, I can’t have a security detail to buy groceries.”
“Then we’ll get groceries delivered—”
“I already get groceries delivered. I’ve been getting everything delivered for a week. It doesn’t help. It just makes my world narrower.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Wesley.”
I looked at him and didn’t say no immediately, which was new.
“I know you said no before. But this—” He gestured toward the laptop. “This is exactly what he warned about. He knows what the first month looks like. He knows how to handle the blog posts, the recognition, the routine documentation. He’s been through it.”
“With people who chose this life. I didn’t choose it. That’s a different problem.”
“Maybe that’s exactly why you should talk to him.” His voice was careful now, not pushing. “Not to manage a public image. To figure out how to protect what’s left of your privacy.”
I knew Wesley wasn’t Ryan’s team. I’d known that since Nico met with him in Portland. Knowing it and feeling it were still two different things. “Let me think about it.” It wasn’t yes, but it wasn’t the flat no it had been before.
Nico nodded. Didn’t push further.
“Then what do you need right now?” he asked. “Not a plan. Just… what do you need tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just need you to understand that this isn’t fixable. There’s no strategy that makes it okay for a website to publish where I live. There’s no plan that stops people from recognizing me in public.”
“I know.” The frustration was still there, underneath, but he was holding it. “I know that. I just…” He blew out a breath. “I hate that I can’t fix it.”
“I know you do.”
We sat there in the heavy silence of a conversation neither of us knew how to finish.
He reached for me, and I let him pull me close. His arms wrapped around me, solid and steady, and for a minute I could breathe again.
This was what I’d been holding onto. This feeling, that even when everything else was impossible, Nico’s presence still made it more bearable. The way he could stand in the middle of my collapsing world and not flinch.
“I’m sorry this is happening to you,” he said against my hair.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Feels like it is.”
We stayed like that for a long time. When he finally pulled back, I could see the exhaustion on his face. The strain of trying to hold both of us together while everything fell apart.
He kissed me, slow and careful, and what I felt was evidence. That he was still here. That this was still real.
I kissed him back and tried to believe it.
He left around ten to get some sleep, and I walked him to the door. He hesitated before leaving.
“Text me tomorrow?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And Evan? If anything else happens—if you see anyone following you, if another article comes out—tell me immediately. Don’t wait.”
“I will.”
He kissed me one more time and left, and I stood in my doorway watching him walk down the hall. The set of his shoulders, the way he rolled his neck once before he entered the elevator… small things, but I knew what they meant.
He was trying so hard—showing up, offering solutions, staying even when I made it difficult.
That had to count for something.
I just didn’t know if it counted for enough.