Chapter 20
twenty
. . .
Witt
There should be a warning before your favorite player becomes your favorite person.
Startled awake by an overzealous business coach shouting on television, I find myself still on the couch—with Maci.
Her feet are in my lap.
My fingers moving back and forth over her ankle.
An alert notification dinging in my head.
Abort mission.
What mission? I’m not on a mission. I’m sitting on my couch. In my living room. Why didn’t I just got to bed?
I’ll tell you why, she was mumbling as she fell asleep something about being a contestant. Other than my nieces and nephews, I’ve never seen anyone so completely open and vulnerable. Well, maybe Parker.
That type of emotion makes me uncomfortable, but for some unknown reason, I’m comfortable with Maci.
She squirms, repositioning her hands, folding them under her cheek. There’s a faint smile on her face and a peacefulness stills inside me. And my body feels like it’s in the middle of being rewired. Electronic pulses shoot through my veins.
Everything in me wants to stay here with her instead of going to bed.
That conclusion is completely illogical. My mattress was selected after three weeks of research, two consultations, and one unnecessary argument with a salesman who kept insisting softness was subjective. The couch is too short. My neck will hurt tomorrow, and I have three meetings before ten.
None of that makes me move.
Maci’s foot shifts in my lap, toes painted a glittery blue, and my hand stills against the warm skin above her ankle. I should remove it. Touching someone while they’re asleep crosses an undefined boundary, and undefined boundaries are dangerous because they cannot be measured.
Yet she put her feet here.
Not intentionally, probably. She stretched out sometime while asleep and used me like an extension of the couch. Most people would take that as an insult.
I don’t.
I look down at her and realize she trusts me enough to sleep without guarding herself.
No careful smile. No confident posture. No quick answer ready in case someone challenges her.
She is simply Maci, curled into the corner of my couch with her silvery-pink hair falling across her cheek and a crease from the pillow forming near her mouth.
She feels safe.
With me.
The thought lands harder than it should.
For most of my life, I have assumed love looks loud.
My brothers wrestle and insult each other until someone gets hurt.
Birdie hugs people before they finish saying hello.
Noelle cries when she’s happy, sad, proud, or tired.
Parker announces every emotion the moment it enters his body, often at an unacceptable volume.
Sutton nurtures everyone, the family, the team, the employees, always making them feel like she’s one of them.
I don’t do any of those things because I’m not like them.
I organize.
I remember.
I notice when someone stops drinking the coffee they usually order or when Dad rubs his knee before it rains. I keep Birdie’s preferred tea in my pantry even though she never asks for it. I bought Witley’s birthday present four months early because she mentioned dinosaurs once.
Until Maci, I wasn’t sure those things counted.
She told me they did.
You show love quietly.
The sentence has been playing on repeat inside my head, and every time it does, something shifts. Not enough to understand. Just enough to acknowledge.
Maybe love isn’t defined by volume.
Maybe it’s measured by attention.
If that’s true, then I am in serious trouble.
I know how Maci takes her coffee—three birthday cake creamers and two sugars like every day is a party.
She’s basically drinking dessert. I know which pretzels she prefers and that she organizes her desk before she can think through a difficult problem.
I know she laughs louder when she’s tired and goes quiet when she believes she has disappointed someone.
I know her decorative mug has a small chip near the handle.
I know she watches baking competitions even though she doesn’t bake.
I know she relaxes when I make her laugh.
I know too much.
Not because I was collecting data.
Because every detail stayed.
My gaze moves toward the hallway where my bedroom waits. For two years, that room has been the safest place in the penthouse. Nobody enters without permission. Nothing changes position. No voices interrupt the silence.
Tonight, it seems less appealing than this couch.
That should concern me.
Instead, I reach over to adjust the pillow beneath her head because her neck is angled incorrectly. I tell myself, she won’t be efficient at work if she has a crick in her neck.
She mumbles something.
I lean closer, trying to understand.
“Too much fondant,” she whispers.
A laugh catches in my chest. That must be the last thing she was thinking before she drifted off.
Quietly, I turn down the volume.
Her body twitches and she pulls her arms in tighter.
Is she cold? I have a climate-controlled system and it’s a perfect seventy degrees in every room. All the time.
I reach for the blanket bunched near the floor that she must have kicked off at some point. Maci stirs when I drape it over her, but she doesn’t wake. She only sighs and settles deeper into the cushion, one foot slipping farther into my lap.
I tuck the blanket around it.
I stare at her.
My hand returns to her ankle before I decide whether it should. This time my thumb moves over the soft skin once, then again, and the tenderness of the gesture feels foreign enough that I stop.
Her breathing stays even.
Her soft smile stays.
I lift her leg slightly, careful not to wake her, and press a soft kiss just above her ankle.
The contact lasts less than a second.
Still, my chest tightens.
Not with panic.
Recognition.
I used to believe loving Rune meant there would never be room for anyone else. She occupied a protected place in my life, separate from family, business, and every expectation I didn’t know how to meet.
I was wrong.
Loving Rune taught me how to let one person into my mind.
Maci is teaching me what happens when someone gets into everything else.
My home.
My family.
My routines.
The quiet parts of me I assumed no one would ever understand.
I should stand.
I should go to bed.
Instead, I lean back into the couch and let her feet remain in my lap. The business coach on television continues shouting advice that any business owner should know, but for once the noise doesn’t bother me enough to turn it off completely.
Maci is here.
That changes the calculation.
I rest my head against the cushion and close my eyes.
Her breathing becomes the only rhythm I track.
Not the clock.
Not the servers.
Not the endless list of problems waiting for me tomorrow.
Her.
I don’t know exactly when wanting her became something more dangerous.
Maybe it happened in the kitchen.
Maybe at the gala.
Maybe when she beat me at an arcade game and threw herself into my arms.
Or maybe it happened slowly, one detail at a time, until the system changed before I realized an update was running.
Whatever the answer, I am no longer objective.
Dara was right.
Distance will not fix this.
I glance at Maci one last time before closing my eyes again.
She never wakes.
I probably won’t sleep much either.
Oddly, I don’t mind.
For the first time in years, I am exactly where I want to be.