Chapter 31 Nora
Nora
“She’s been so brave today,” I whisper in the doorway of my spare room.
Michaela’s fast asleep on my spare bed with Archie curled around her like a golden comma.
David stands just behind me, close enough that I feel the heat of him at my back without him actually touching me.
“She has,” he says quietly.
His voice carries that scraped-raw quality it gets when he’s holding himself together by force and not much else.
I glance one last time at Michaela—one hand tucked under her cheek, the stuffed seal trapped under one arm, Archie’s giant head resting protectively across her ankles like he’s personally accepted a security detail—then I ease the door in until it’s nearly closed.
The hall light throws a dim gold strip across the hardwood. For a second, neither of us moves. The whole house seems to breathe carefully around the fact that a child is sleeping inside it.
“She crashed hard,” I murmur.
David nods once. “The second she stopped talking.”
That had happened somewhere in the middle of her third cookie and an extremely serious explanation of why butterfly larva arguably possess a stronger claim to selfhood than certain family-court judges.
One minute she’d been upright on my couch with Archie draped over her feet and crumbs on her cardigan, insisting she was “operational but disappointed in the concept of biological motherhood,” and the next her eyes had gone heavy and she was fast asleep on the arm of my couch. Then David carried her in here.
I smile faintly at the memory, then lose it just as quickly, because the exhaustion in David’s face is too stark to ignore now that the immediate task is over.
He looks wrecked.
“Come sit down for a minute,” I say softly.
He hesitates like sitting down might be the thing that finally lets the day hit him.
Then he follows me into the living room.
I keep the lights low—just the lamp by the couch and the wash of evening through the front window. The remains of our emergency decompression session are still on the coffee table—milk glasses, cookie crumbs, Michaela’s newest drawing of Archie left beside a legal pad.
I pick up the empty plate and carry it into the kitchen. It gives me something to do with my hands. Behind me, I hear the soft exhale of cushions as David sits.
When I come back, he’s leaning forward with his forearms braced on his thighs, hands clasped between his knees, tie loosened, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, looking less like a devastating attorney and more like a man one hard gust could knock flat.
I sit beside him, angled toward him.
For a second, neither of us says anything.
Then I ask the only question that matters. “How bad was it?”
David drags a hand over his face. “I asked her why.”
The words settle between us, heavy and quiet.
I don’t rush in to fill the silence. David has that look he gets when he’s deciding how much truth to uncork at once, and I’ve learned that pushing him when he’s already raw is a good way to make him retreat behind polished phrasing and attorney-grade restraint.
So I wait.
His gaze drops to his clasped hands. “And she lied.”
My chest tightens. “About why she came back?”
He nods once. “About all of it, apparently.”
I lean back against the couch cushion and tuck one leg under me, turning more fully toward him. “Tell me.”
He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, like even breathing has to be managed carefully tonight. “She told Thomas that when she left, I made it impossible for her to take Michaela. That I kept her from her.”
For a second I just stare at him.
Then all the oxygen leaves my lungs in a hot, furious rush.
“She what?”
His mouth curves without humor. “That was more or less my response.”
“No.” I shake my head hard, because it feels physically necessary. “No, that isn’t even a distortion of the truth. That’s fiction. That’s a full genre leap.”
“Apparently, Thomas had no idea Michaela existed until he ran a background check before the wedding.” David’s voice stays eerily calm. “Kelsie adapted.”
I think of Thomas in my reception area in his loafers, his decent manners, his concern about making Wednesdays something Michaela might “look forward to,” and I feel a fresh wave of rage for him on top of everything else.
“Oh my God,” I say again, softer this time, because fury is one thing and the shape of the lie is another. “He really believes she was some tragic wronged mother.”
David’s jaw shifts. “He defended her. Gently, but yes. He thinks she’s trying.”
I press my lips together so hard they hurt.
I should probably say something measured. Something adult, strategic, principal-like. Instead what comes out is, “I would like to fight her in a parking lot.”
That gets a sound out of him. Not a laugh exactly, but a tired, startled exhale with the edges of one.
“Noted,” he says.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.” He glances at me. “It’s one of the things I love about you.”
The warmth of that lands in me and tangles immediately with the anger. God, I love him. Even now. Especially now, maybe. All this exhausted control, all this effort not to bleed in front of anyone, and still he says things like that in a voice rough with truth.
His eyes hold mine.
There’s still anger in me, still outrage, protectiveness, the aftertaste of everything Michaela endured today—but under it, just as powerful, is the pulse that’s been there all evening.
Since he walked into my house with his daughter.
Since he looked at me like I was part refuge, part temptation, and entirely dangerous to his self-control.
I don’t think. That’s the problem.
I reach for him.
My hand finds his jaw first, rough with end-of-day stubble, and then I kiss him.
He makes a low sound against my mouth like surprise and relief colliding, and then his hand is at the back of my neck, his body turning toward mine in one swift, inevitable motion.
The kiss deepens instantly. No hesitation.
No careful edges. Just heat, hunger, all the things we haven’t been saying while an exhausted child slept down the hall.
I slide closer on the couch, one hand braced against his shoulder, the other in his hair. He tastes like coffee, the last terrible hour, and something purely, ruinously David. His mouth is hot, thorough, a little desperate, and when his palm spreads over my waist I feel the whole day tilt.
“We should probably stop,” I whisper against his lips, which is apparently my body’s favorite lie.
“No,” he murmurs, kissing me again. “Definitely not.”
His hand moves from my waist to my thigh, drifting up under my sweater, and I gasp softly into his mouth.
The slide of his hand over my bare skin is enough to liquefy what’s left of my judgment. His fingers drag down the cup of my bra and cover my breast, possessive and careful at once, and I shift closer, tugging his tie loose and sliding it free.
This is a terrible idea.
This is also, very possibly, the only idea my body has ever fully supported.
“David,” I whisper, but it comes out like encouragement.
“Mm?” His mouth drags along mine, then my jaw, then the place just under my ear that he’s already learned ruins me.
“We’re being reckless.”
“Yes,” he says, voice rough. “I’m aware.”
His thumb brushes over my peaked nipple.
I make a helpless sound and grab his shoulders, because the room seems to tilt again and I need something solid. He’s all solid. Hard lines under expensive cotton, tension wound through him so tight I feel it in the way he holds me—as if he’s trying to be controlled and failing by inches.
He kisses me harder. I climb into his lap before I can pretend I had another plan.
His breath catches.
There’s no elegant way to do it. One moment I’m beside him, the next I’m straddling him on my own couch, my knees braced on either side of his thighs, my hands in his hair while he looks up at me like I’ve just personally destroyed the last useful piece of his restraint.
“Nora.”
I kiss him again instead of answering, and his hands come to my hips with a grip that says everything he isn’t voicing—need, frustration, the kind of want that feels like it could burn us both alive if we let it.
I rock against him instinctively, feeling the hard length of him through his trousers, and a low groan rumbles from his chest, vibrating into my mouth as he pulls me down tighter, like he’s trying to fuse us together right here on the couch.
My sweater rides up under his palms, exposing skin that feels electric where he touches it, and I break the kiss just long enough to yank the fabric over my head, tossing it somewhere behind me without a second thought.
His eyes darken, dropping to my lace bra, and before I can draw another breath, he’s unhooking it with one deft hand, sliding the straps down my arms until I’m bare to him.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs, his voice gravel-rough, and then his mouth is on my breast, hot and insistent, tongue circling in a way that sends sparks straight to my core.
I arch into him, my fingers fumbling with his shirt buttons, desperate for more of his skin against mine.
The fabric parts under my hands, revealing the firm planes of his chest, and I drag my nails lightly down his abdomen, savoring the way his muscles jump and tense.
He’s so controlled, even now, but I feel the cracks forming, the way his breath hitches when I grind down harder, chasing friction.
“Bed,” I gasp, because the couch suddenly feels too exposed, too close to the hallway where Michaela sleeps, even if the door is mostly shut and Archie would probably alert us before anything disastrous happens.
David nods against my skin, his hands sliding under my thighs to lift me as he stands, like I weigh nothing at all when I damn well know I’m bigger than most women.
I wrap my legs around his waist, clinging to him as he carries me down the hall, his mouth never leaving my neck, trailing kisses and gentle bites that make my pulse thunder in my ears.