Not then. Not now. Not with him.
So I kissed him again, and again, until there was no space left for fear—just heat, heartbeat, and the faint glow of lights flickering above us like they were holding their breath too.
There was something almost unbearably gentle about the way he looked at me.
I’d spent years perfecting my armor—sarcasm, wit, work, independence, a schedule so packed it could smother feeling. But being here in the soft light of my bedroom, Drew didn’t try to break through any of it. He let me choose.
And I did.
Every ounce of logic told me to stop. To take a step back. To keep the line between us where it belonged, where it had been, mostly, except for all those nights I’d pretended not to notice how he looked at me when I walked into The Rusty Stag.
But I didn’t want lines anymore. I wanted him.
His hands found my waist again, and everything inside me went quiet. No more noise, no second-guessing, no city clatter in the background. Just the thrum of my pulse and the weight of his palms on my skin, steady and warm, grounding me when my thoughts tried to spin.
He kissed me like we had all the time in the world. Not rushed or frantic, but certain. Like he was memorizing, cataloging, promising something wordless. His lips brushed my jaw, my throat, the corner of my mouth before finding it again, and I felt something deep in me break open.
Desire. Fear. Need. They all swirled together, impossible to untangle.
I tangled my fingers in his hair, tugging gently until he lifted his head to meet my gaze. His eyes were so green in the low light, so open it made my chest ache.
“This doesn’t have to mean anything,” I heard myself whisper. I don’t even know why I said it…some last-ditch effort to protect myself, maybe. A preemptive excuse for whatever came next.
“Let it mean everything,” he said simply.
And that was it. The final, inevitable undoing.
He kissed me again, and the world fell away.
I didn’t care about the distance between us, or the fact that he belonged to a place that thrived on slow mornings and small-town certainty while I belonged to the noise and motion of the city. None of it mattered. Not the months we’d gone without seeing each other before, or the fact that I’d sworn I wouldn’t fall again.
All that mattered was this—his touch, his voice, the heat curling low in my stomach every time he whispered my name like it was a secret meant only for him.
I caught my foot on the edge of the rug and stumbled backward. His hands steadied me, but his mouth never left mine. The kiss turned deeper, hungrier, the kind that makes you forget your own name, and I felt myself giving in inch by inch, heartbeat by heartbeat.
When my back met the mattress, the twinkle lights above us flickered, casting shifting patterns across the ceiling. He hovered over me for a moment, his breath ragged, his hair falling into his eyes.
He looked like temptation and tenderness rolled into one impossible man, and I wanted to freeze the moment just to keep him looking at me like that forever.
“Melanie,” he whispered, his voice rough, reverent. “Tell me to stop.”
“I can’t,” I said, and I meant it.
He smiled—small, unguarded, and devastating—and then his mouth was on mine again, and I stopped thinking entirely as his hands unfastened my bra.
Every brush of his skin against mine was slow, deliberate, and dizzying. My hands mapped the lines of his shoulders, his chest, the curve of muscle down his back. I wanted to memorize every inch of him, to anchor myself in the feel of it—the realness of being wanted this much.
He touched me like he couldn’t believe I was real, and in return, I couldn’t believe someone like him could be both this gentle and this sure as I shimmied out of my underwear while he kicked off his.
The rhythm between us shifted, caught fire. My breath hitched, his fingers tightened against my hip, and I knew—knew that whatever happened after tonight, I wouldn’t be able to pretend it didn’t matter.
Because it did.
It mattered more than I wanted it to.
When he paused, searching my face again, I felt my throat tighten.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted quietly, the truth breaking free before I could stop it. “With you. With this.”
