Chapter Twenty Nora #2
I’m staring at my plate, the pattern of the china swimming slightly. The pattern is blue flowers on white. I have seen it a hundred times. Tonight, it blurs and shifts, refusing to stay still.
“That wasn’t okay,” Maeve says softly.
I nod, even though I’m not entirely sure what I’m agreeing to. It takes a second before I look up. “Is it… like that?” I ask. The words feel awkward, too big. “Does it seem like I’m… doing something?”
“No,” she says immediately.
Relief moves through me too fast, too sharp. My shoulders drop. My breath comes easier.
“It’s not you,” she continues. “It’s him.”
I blink. “What?”
Maeve leans back. Her full attention settles on me. Her expression softens—a familiar sign that she is picking her next words with care.
“He watches where you are in a room,” she says. “Not in a way that draws attention. It’s… subtle. But it’s there. His eyes find you first, every time he walks in.”
A knot pulls tight behind my ribs.
“He changes things,” she continues, quieter now, more certain. “Where he stands. Where he sits. He leaves space before you even ask for it. If you shift, he shifts. If someone gets too close, he notices before you do. It’s instinct for him at this point.”
Images flicker through my mind—moments I didn’t register then, small adjustments I never questioned.
“He pays attention to you in a way most people don’t. And when you talk…” She pauses, then smiles. “Even when it’s just a few words, even when you stop halfway—he doesn’t fill it. He waits. He waits for you.”
I shake my head. “That doesn’t mean—”
“I know,” she says gently, cutting me off. “I’m not saying it means anything you have to act on. I’m not saying it changes anything for you.”
She holds my gaze, letting the words settle. “I’m just saying it’s there.”
Before I can respond, a chair shifts beside me.
Kieran sits down, moving it slightly away from mine without thinking.
The same small gap.
“What did I miss?” he asks.
Maeve answers easily. “Myra being annoying.”
He snorts softly. “Shocking.”
I keep my eyes on my plate. On the placemat. The edge of my fork. The curve of my napkin. Anywhere but him.
Nothing about him has changed. But everything feels different.
Dinner moves on.
Voices rise and fall around me. Plates pass. Someone argues about the cake. I respond when I’m spoken to. I nod. I manage a faint smile at one of Maeve’s dad’s jokes.
But I don’t look at him.
Not once.
*****
I don’t sleep much that night.
I drift in and out, never fully under. Every time I close my eyes, the same thought rises back up—unfinished, unresolved, circling.
It sits there in the dark, pressing at me, asking to be named.
I turn it over again and again, trying to smooth it down, trying to return it to what it was before Myra said it out loud.
Before it had edges. Before it meant anything. But it won’t go back.
By morning, I’m exhausted in a way sleep wouldn’t have fixed anyway. I know I can’t carry it another day, can’t sit beside him and pretend nothing shifted.
So when our break starts, I don’t give myself time to hesitate. Kieran finds me standing. He’s just about to sit when I speak. “Do you have feelings for me?”
It comes out too fast. Too direct. It cuts straight through everything.
He freezes, mid-motion. One hand still on the back of the chair, his body caught between standing and sitting. Then he blinks once, slowly. He lets out a short, surprised breath that almost sounds like a laugh.
“Oh,” he says. “Wow. Okay.” He straightens, running a hand through his hair, the gesture restless, almost flustered. “You could’ve given the guy some warning, you know.”
His voice is light. But I see the flicker beneath it. His hand trembles, just slightly, before he shoves it into his pocket.
I don’t smile.
He notices. The shift in him is immediate. The lightness drops. His focus sharpens, all of his attention landing on me.
“Yes.” His gaze doesn’t leave mine. There’s no embarrassment in it, no attempt to hide behind humor this time. Just openness. Direct. “I do.”
I knew it was coming. Still, believing it feels impossible. I nod. Too fast. Too eager. As if nodding hard enough can hold everything together. “Okay.” I swallow. Say it again. “Okay.”
Panic floods my chest. Fast. Icy. It has nothing to do with him or his answer. I know what comes after this: the expectation, the demand, the withdrawal. The withdrawal if I fail to give the correct reply. If I fail to feel the correct feeling.
I can already feel the loss of him, and it terrifies me.
Because I like him.
Being with him does something to me I didn’t know I needed. The tightness in my chest eases. My shoulders drop, a fraction at first, then more, until I realize how much I’d been carrying without noticing.
He slipped into my days without asking—into the spaces I didn’t even know were waiting to be filled. A cup of hot chocolate set beside me without a word. A laugh I can pick out without looking. A presence I’ve started to expect.
I didn’t notice when it happened.
Only now—when I imagine him gone—do I feel the space he’s taken up, sudden and undeniable, pressing against my chest.
“I need to say something,” I add, the words coming out quickly.
He nods. Waits. He doesn’t rush me. Doesn’t interrupt. He just stays.
“I—” The word sticks. I push past it anyway. “You’re really important to me.”
His expression softens, but he stays silent, letting me finish.
“You matter. A lot.” The confession rushes out of me. “You have always been here. Always felt safe.” My fingers curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “I don’t want to lose that.”
My chest tightens, the next part harder to get through. “I’ve never—” I stop, shake my head, start again. “I’ve never gotten to do things on my own.”
The words keep coming. “I went from my father’s house to Julian’s. From one set of rules to another. From being someone’s daughter to being someone’s wife.” My voice wobbles, but I don’t stop. I cannot stop. “I was barely an adult. I didn’t get to choose anything.”
Kieran’s jaw tightens. His hands curl into fists at his sides. He looks away, his gaze dropping to the floor. When he looks back at me, his eyes soften again.
“And now,” I say, my hands coming together in front of me, fingers pressing lightly against each other.
“Now I’m starting to choose. I’m building something that’s mine.
I’m learning how to sit with myself… how to want things, how to say them out loud.
” A faint smile slips through. “I want more of that.”
I hold his eyes. “I want to be with myself.” I straighten, shoulders settling into place. “Before I try to be with anyone else.”
The silence after is thick. Waiting. It stretches between us, holding everything I’ve just laid bare—the fear, the wanting, the fear of wanting.
I wait.
For the disappointment. For the shift. For the beginning of losing him.
Instead, he smiles.
Open. Unrestrained. The smile reaches his eyes. It softens his whole face. Pride lighting it.
“Good,” he says.
“Good?” I repeat, thrown.
He sees it—how quickly my mind went somewhere else, how I was already preparing for loss.
“Do I make you uncomfortable now?” he asks.
I shake my head immediately. “No. You don’t.”
“Okay.” He studies me for a second, making sure I mean it. “Do you like sitting here with me every day?”
“Yes.” It comes out without hesitation. There’s no space between the question and the answer.
He nods, a sense of resolve forming in his expression. “And do you want to keep doing that? Spending these fifteen minutes together?”
I nod slowly. “Yes.”
He shrugs lightly. “Then nothing’s changing.”
I stare at him, trying to understand.
“That’s… what you want?” I ask. “That’s all?”
A soft laugh leaves him, easy, unforced. “Nora,” he says, “these fifteen minutes are the best part of my day.”
My lips part.
“I think about them before they happen.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, a faint, almost self-conscious smile tugging at his mouth. “I find myself checking the time. Waiting for it.”
He lets out a breath. “I like sitting here with you. Talking. Or not talking.” His head tilts slightly, searching for the right way to put it. “It doesn’t feel like I have to be anything. I can just… be here.”
His fingers tap once against his thigh. “So if you’re okay with it…” he continues, quieter now, more careful, “then nothing needs to change. I don’t need more than this. I just want to keep this. Exactly as it is.”
My shoulders drop, the tension slipping away. He isn’t asking for more. He isn’t pushing. He’s choosing this—choosing me, exactly where I am.
“I’d like that,” I say. And I mean it. Fully. “I’d really like that.”
And we do.
We keep those fifteen minutes.
Every day.
On the days the heat presses in, we sit anyway, the air thick, sweat gathering at our temples, neither of us moving away.
On the days it rains, we stand close under the narrow shelter, water spilling over the edges, our shoulders brushing now and then, neither of us stepping back.
Some days we talk. About things that don’t matter. About things that do. About memories that surface and need somewhere to go.
Some days we don’t. We sit side by side, sharing the same air, the same space, letting the world move around us without stepping into it.
Some days we’re tired, leaning back, eyes half-closed, existing in the same moment without asking anything more of it.
Some days we laugh over things that vanish as quickly as they come, leaving only the feeling behind.
Those fifteen minutes become a constant.
A place we return to. A space that belongs to us in the middle of everything else.
We keep choosing it.
Again and again.
Day after day.
Week after week.
Until it’s time for me to leave.