16. Jo
— ? —
Jo
Rory is at a sleepover.
Grace arranged it specifically so I could have the night, called in favors, promised extra cookies, did whatever best-friend magic she does to make things happen. The most expensive wine in the world seems like insufficient payment, but it’s a start.
Nick’s apartment door barely closes before he’s pressing me against it.
His mouth is hot on mine, his hands already finding the zipper of my ruined dress. The champagne dried sticky against my skin hours ago, but neither of us cared enough to stop on the way here.
“You’re incredible,” he says against my throat. “Watching you stand up to her...”
“Less talking.”
His laugh is low and dark, vibrating against my collarbone. The dress falls to my feet in a whisper of fabric.
Standing in the entryway in nothing but underwear, still slightly sticky with dried champagne, should feel self-conscious. But the way he’s looking at me, like I’m something rare and a little dangerous all at once, makes self-consciousness impossible.
“Shower.”
“What?”
“I’m covered in champagne. Shower. Now.”
The grin that spreads across his face is wicked. His shirt goes over his head in one fluid motion. “Yes ma’am.”
The bathroom is all glass and marble, big enough to get lost in. The shower alone could fit four people comfortably, with multiple heads and a rainfall option that turns on at the touch of a button.
The water runs hot, steam rising, and then Nick is behind me, his chest against my back, his hands sliding over wet skin.
He starts at my shoulders, working the tension out of muscles that have been knotted for days. His thumbs dig into the tight spots, easing them loose, and a moan slips free before I can stop it.
“Better?” he murmurs against my ear.
“Don’t stop.”
His hands slide down my arms, my sides, my hips. He turns me around, cups water in his palms, rinses the champagne from my hair. The tenderness of it, this big, powerful man carefully washing dried alcohol out of my curls, and the last knot in my chest comes undone.
“I’ve wanted you since the first day,” he says, his voice barely audible over the spray. “Since you crashed into me and looked at me like I was your worst nightmare.”
“You were intimidating.”
“Terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Of how much I wanted to know you.” His hands frame my face, tilting it up toward his. “Of how much I wanted this.”
Kissing him under the spray, water running between our mouths, feels like coming home. His hands find my breasts, my hips, the curve of my ass. Reaching down to wrap around him, feeling him hard and ready, pulls a groan from his throat.
“Jo...”
“I want you inside me. Here. Right now.”
He lifts me without effort, my legs lock around his waist, and my back meets the cool tile while the water runs hot down both of us. He lines himself up and stops there, his forehead dropping to mine.
“Look at me,” he says.
I open my eyes. His are dark and steady and stripped of every wall he has ever built, and he slides into me slow while he holds my gaze, inch by inch, until there’s nowhere left for him to go.
Neither of us moves. We breathe each other in, joined to the root, the water sheeting down between us and the steam shutting the rest of the world out. Seven years untouched and I had forgotten it could feel like this. Like being known.
“Okay?” he asks, and his voice is barely holding together.
“Move.”
He moves. Deep and unhurried, watching every flicker that crosses my face, learning me in real time, and when he shifts the angle and finds the place that makes me clutch at his shoulders he goes back to it again, and again, until I’m gasping his name into the wet heat between us.
“Harder,” I tell him. “I won’t break.”
His restraint finally goes. He drives into me with the tile cold against my back and his hands gripping my thighs hard enough to bruise, and he keeps his eyes on mine the whole time, saying my name like it’s the only word left in him.
The pressure winds tighter with every thrust, low and white and unbearable, and I feel myself climbing the edge of it.
“Stay with me,” he says, lips brushing mine. “Right here. Don’t close your eyes.”
I don’t. I come undone with my gaze locked on his, my body clenching around him, my nails carving half-moons into his shoulders. He follows a heartbeat later, a groan torn out of him that I feel inside my own chest, the two of us shaking under the spray until the last of it ebbs out.
After, wrapped in towels that are softer than any towels have a right to be, we lie tangled in his bed. The sheets are cool against skin still warm from the shower.
“Stay,” he says.
“I can’t. Rory will be back in the morning...”
“Stay tonight. Leave early.” He pulls me closer, fitting my body against his like we were made to slot together. “But stay.”
The decision should be harder than it is. But the warmth of him, the safety of his arms, the bone-deep exhaustion of the past few weeks, staying is less a choice than a surrender.
“Okay.” The word comes out soft. “Okay.”
Sleep comes faster than expected, deep and dreamless. For the first time in seven years, the night passes without waking, no nightmares, no anxiety jolting me awake at 3 a.m., no lying in the dark wondering what disaster tomorrow will bring.
In the early morning light, watching him sleep feels like a privilege. The hard lines of his face are soft, unguarded. The furrow between his brows has smoothed out. He looks younger like this. Peaceful. A man who isn’t carrying the weight of a family war on his shoulders.
I trace his features with my fingertips without meaning to, the strong jaw, the cheekbones, the curve of his lips. He stirs slightly but doesn’t wake.
I love him.
The thought rises up, simple and certain, settling into place like it’s always belonged there.
Not the tentative, questioning love of someone still figuring out her feelings, but the deep, rooted kind that comes from knowing someone and choosing them anyway.
From seeing their flaws and their fears and their family’s darkness, and thinking yes, this one, I want this one.
I love him, and he loves me, and somehow, against all odds, we found each other.
The words don’t need to be spoken. They’ve already been said, already been proven in a hundred small ways, the way he stood between Rory and danger, the way he held me while I fell apart, the way he gave up his family for a woman he’d known for months.
But feeling them, really feeling them in the quiet of early morning with his heartbeat steady under my palm, that’s something else entirely. That’s the kind of love that terrifies and grounds in equal measure. The kind worth fighting for.
Outside the window, the city is waking up. The sky is pink and gold with dawn, Manhattan spread out below, a promise. Somewhere out there, battles are waiting to be fought. Custody hearings. Family wars. A future that’s anything but certain.
But right now, in this bed, with this man, none of that exists.
Right now, there’s only this: the warmth of his body, the rhythm of his breathing, the absolute certainty that whatever comes next, facing it together is possible.
For the first time in longer than memory serves, the future feels like something to look forward to instead of something to survive.