He turns his head on the pillow. The grin goes soft at the corners, and for once, he doesn’t reach for a joke to land on.
“I’m not a leaver, Linwood.” He looks at me. “Whatever else I am. I don’t have it in me.”
And the want comes back.
Not in the flood this time, not the adrenaline that carried me across the hall — something steadier than that. Something with its eyes open. Because I have evidence now that I didn’t have an hour ago. He stopped. He didn’t push. The fear isn’t gone — it’s never going to be gone, I know how this works — but it’s smaller than the want now, and for the first time in three years, I have a reason to believe the wanting might be survivable with this particular person.
So I choose again. Smaller this time. More careful. Mine.
“Okay,” I say.
He goes still. “Okay?”
“But I need—” I push up on one elbow, and I make myself say it, all of it, out loud, because being precise is the only way Ihave ever known how to hold fear in place. “I need you to have something. Do you have something?”
“I—yeah.” He’s already reaching for his bag, no smirk, no questions. “Yeah. I think I’ve got it.”
“And.” This is the hard part. I keep my eyes on his face so I can watch it when I say the words — watch for the flicker, the joke, the thing that would tell me he doesn’t understand what he’s being handed. “I need you to promise me. Even with it. Promise me you won’t—” My throat shuts. I force it open. “Promise you won’t finish inside me.”
I watch him take it completely seriously. No joke. Not even the ghost of one.
“I promise,” he says plainly. “Both. The thing and the promise. I’ve got you, Aspen.”
He doesn’t tell me I’m being paranoid. He doesn’t tell me the one makes the other unnecessary, doesn’t explain my own fear back to me. He can see that I need them both, and he just gives me all of it like needing it is the most reasonable request anyone’s ever made of him.
“I promise,” he says again, softer, like he heard the sentence I didn’t say out loud.
And the night changes.
The fear that has run my entire adult life takes a step back — not gone, just quiet and outvoted. And for the first time, I don’t need to analyze whether I’m safe.
I lean in and kiss him.
Gently, this time. No adrenaline behind it, nothing to outrun — just my mouth on his. He kisses me back like he means it and like he has all night, no rush in him anywhere, no hands trying to move things along. Just Stanley, letting me set the pace.
I have never once thought of him as a lover. He’s been a hundred things to me — the boy across the rink, the name in my father’s mouth, the lie, the enemy, the one person who knowsmy worst thing — but never this. And now that I know how his mouth feels moving slow and certain against mine, I don’t think I’ll ever manage to see him as anything less again.
I sit up enough to pull my shirt over my head.
His eyes drop, and something in his breathing changes. I reach back and unhook my bra and let it fall. He inhales like the air in the room just got thinner.
“Asp—”
I don’t let him finish the thought. I lean in and kiss him quiet. I find the hem of his shirt and drag it up and off, and when his bare chest meets mine, I put my mouth to the corner of his and whisper, “Don’t be scared to touch me.”
He pulls back just far enough to look at me, and there’s something serious moving under all that gold. “This,” he says. “This changes things. You know that.”
I kiss the corner of his mouth. “I know.”
“Are you okay with that?” His voice has gone low and careful. He kisses my cheek like he can’t quite hold still. “With change?”
I nod, and I mean it all the way down. “Are you?”
His fingers slide up the bare length of my spine, and I feel him shiver. “I don’t know if I’ll survive it.”
“Survive what?” His mouth is at my throat now and it’s hard to keep a sentence in one piece.
“Going pro.” It comes out rough, half into my skin. “Having you. All of it.”
