Chapter 24
twenty-four
. . .
“Well?” she asked through the open window.
“Well what?”
“Did the saints at Mena’s save you or make it worse?”
I slid into the passenger seat and let out a breath. “Both.”
“That sounds correct.”
We ended up at Ross Park Mall because apparently emotional unrest still benefited from retail. Kendra said that was science, and I was too tired to fight her on it.
The mall was cool and bright and expensive in that polished suburban way that made women start spending money like they had something to prove to themselves.
Maybe I did.
I bought a butter-yellow A.L.C. midi dress with a waist that deserved its own thank-you note.
A black SIMKHAI knit dress that fit like a threat.
A pair of nude Gianvito Rossi pumps because suffering should at least have good heels attached to it.
Then I wandered into Sephora and let a girl with flawless skin talk me into a fresh tube of Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk gloss, a new Pat McGrath lip pencil in Deep Dive, and a NARS blush I absolutely did not need but wanted on principle.
Kendra watched me swipe my card and shook her head. “You spend money like a woman trying not to text somebody.”
“I am not trying not to text somebody.”
Kendra looked over at me. “Okay. Then prove you’re not in love with that nigga and put your phone in your bag.”
That got me laughing in spite of myself.
After that, we got our brows threaded, because pain apparently liked company.
By the time she dropped me back at the salon to pick up my car, night had settled in for real.
My bags cut into my fingers. My feet hurt in that satisfying, well-spent way.
My face still held the remnants of annoyance, but softer now.
And there he was.
Parked at the curb, Micah’s Black Benz sat gleaming under the streetlight, dark and still, like it had been there long enough to become part of the block.
I stopped on the walkway because I had not told him to come, had not expected him to, and Lord only knew how long he had been sitting out there waiting.
The driver’s door opened before I reached the steps.
Micah got out slowly, eyes on me, face quieter than usual. No little line ready. No smile trying to loosen the room before we got in it. Just him, serious and steady, coming toward me like he had already decided he was not leaving this alone.
He took the shopping bags from my hands without asking.
“You went shopping,” he said.
“With Kendra.”
That was all.
No kiss. No playing in my face. No trying to sweet-talk me out of where I was.
He carried the bags to my car, put them in the back seat, and waited while I unlocked my door.
“You following me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No question tucked under it. Just yes.
Something in my chest shifted, but I didn’t give it too much room yet. I got in my car, started the engine, and pulled away from the salon with his headlights following behind me all the way back to my townhouse.
Inside, we moved through the little motions that had started to feel regular with us.
Me unlocking the door. Him bringing in the bags and setting them by the console.
Me slipping off my shoes. Him looking toward the kitchen like maybe he should offer food, water, something useful.
Both of us quiet. Both of us knowing this was not a regular night no matter how normal we tried to move through it.
I headed for the bedroom first because I needed to change before I dealt with him. Needed a second where my hands were busy and my heart could mind its damn business.
I made it as far as the hall before his voice caught me.
“Talia.”
I kept going anyway.
Not to be mean.
I just wasn’t ready yet.
By the time I got to my room, I could hear his footsteps behind me. I dropped the shopping bags on the bed and reached for the zipper at my back like getting out of my dress was suddenly the most pressing thing in my life.
He caught my wrists before I got it halfway down.
Not rough.
Just enough to stop me from acting like I had something better to do than hear him.
“Come here.”
I looked up at him.
His face was so open it almost made me mad all over again.
He took both my hands in one of his and led me out of the bedroom, back down the hall, back into the living room where there was nowhere for either one of us to hide behind little tasks.
He sat first and pulled me down beside him on the couch. Not in his lap. Not trapped. Just close enough that I could feel my own pulse acting up.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then he looked at me, and I knew he had come here to tell the truth for real.
“I know what I did,” he said.
My throat pulled tight immediately.
Because that was the thing about finally getting the truth. Once it showed up, a woman had to be ready to hold it.
He kept going.
“I knew it by the time I left you the other night. Knew it the next day. Knew it sitting on Devon’s couch, trying to act like I hadn’t left you standing out there by yourself in that moment.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I kept telling myself I was protecting what we had.”
I said nothing.
He looked down at our hands once, then back at me.
“And some of that was true,” he said. “I didn’t want Bryce or the timeline or none of them getting their hands on something that mattered to me before I knew how to hold it right.”
I heard the truth in that, and it didn’t fix everything. And yet it still reached me.
Then his face changed.
“But mostly,” he said, “I was being an idiot and protecting my own heart, not yours.”
My eyes burned with tears before I could stop them.
And that made me mad too, because I knew exactly what that felt like. I knew what it was to want something real and still keep one hand near the exit. I knew what it was to love a man and still move careful because life had already taught me too many lessons I never asked for.
I could sit here and be mad that he hadn’t jumped when I did, but truthfully, I had made him wait too. Made him stand there while I acted like my heart wasn’t already leaning his way.
Micah saw whatever crossed my face and shifted closer.
“I’ve been moving like a man who still thinks real things go fake if he stares at them too long,” he said. “Like if I keep it light enough, private enough, under enough control, I won’t have to face how deep you got in me.” His voice dropped lower. “That stopped making sense a while ago.”
He reached up and wiped under my eye with his thumb, careful because he knew exactly how much pride I had and how close I was to losing my grip anyway.
“I love you,” he said.
He kept his hand at my face.
“I love you,” he said again, slower this time. “And I was trying to protect my heart from a woman who already had it. That was stupid. That was me. Not you.” He swallowed once. “My heart is yours, Talia.”
The tears came harder after that, and there wasn’t a damn thing to do about them.
I shook my head once.
“What?” he asked softly.
“You waited until I spent all that damn money at Ross Park to say this?”
That got an actual laugh out of him. Low. Shaky enough to make my own chest hurt.
“I should’ve said it sooner.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I know.”
His thumbs moved under my eyes again, wiping what they could. “I’m going to come correct,” he said. “I’m going to do this the right way. I’m not going to keep fucking this up because I’m scared of how real you are to me.”
And there it was.
That had been the wound all along, and Bryce had only touched the edge of it.
The real hurt was thinking maybe I had gotten farther out in my heart than he had. Thinking maybe I was standing in something fuller while he was still halfway back, still deciding, still watching me from a distance I had already crossed.
I took a breath that shook on the way out.
“I love you too,” I said.
His eyes shut for one beat, like the words hit someplace tender in him he hadn’t fully touched yet.
When they opened again, they were darker but somehow softer too.
Then his mouth met mine, slow this time, without the usual rush that turned every room around us to blur. He kissed me like he had something to say with it, like he wanted me to feel every bit of what had shifted between us before desire carried the rest away.
This kiss was slower than that. Deeper. Full of all the words we had finally stopped dodging.
His hand at the back of my neck. My fingers curling into his shirt.
Both of us still breathing unevenly from the honesty of it.
It felt like relief and want had braided themselves together, and neither one of us had the strength to untangle them before they turned into something else.
I climbed into his lap without thinking.
He made a sound into my mouth that told me the tenderness was real, but so was the man underneath it.
“Come closer,” he murmured, even though I was already there.
“I am here.”
“Closer.”
That made me laugh against his mouth, and then he kissed me again until laughter had no business being in the room at all.
By the time we made it upstairs, the house had gone quiet around us. Up here it was just us, the soft dim of my bedroom, and the way Micah looked at me like he had finally stopped trying to stand outside his own feelings.
He undressed me with both hands and all that attention, like every piece of fabric between us had become an inconvenience he meant to handle properly.
My dress slid down first. Then my bra. Then the little panties I had bought because some silly part of me still believed beautiful underwear could steady a heart that had been knocked around.
He got them off me slow, eyes on my body the whole time, and when he laid me back on the bed, he came over me with that same quiet in his face that always meant I was about to feel him everywhere.
“Tell me if anything still hurts,” he said.
I looked up at him and knew he wasn’t only talking about my body.