Even though I know it isn't.
Even though I know I want more.
My eyes finally close, exhaustion catching up with adrenaline and emotion.
And as I drift off to sleep with her hand in mine and the memory of her body against mine still burning through my veins, I think:
This is going to hurt.
Because either she stays and we try to build something from the ruins of what we were, or she leaves and I have to learn how to exist in a world where I know exactly what I'm missing.
Either way, I'm already in too deep to come out unscathed.
But lying here with her, feeling her breathe, knowing she's safe and here and mine for at least this one night?—
I'd take the pain a thousand times over if it meant having this—even for a night, even for a heartbeat, even if it shatters us both come morning.
Because some things are worth the breaking.
Some people are worth the ruin.
And she's always been both.
CHAPTER 30
ALWAYS
NORA
It feelslike someone took a baseball bat to my head overnight.
Dear God, this headache.
No—not a baseball bat. A sledgehammer. Wielded by someone with a personal vendetta and excellent upper body strength.
This is what I get for treating sangria like a sports drink.
The headache throbs in rhythm with yesterday's memories: the sangrias, the photos of Wes and Molly I can't unsee, the humiliation. The baby shower that blurred at the edges like a watercolor painting someone left in the rain.
How everything spun until it didn't.
And then there's the man currently lying next to me.
Which is either the best or worst decision I've made in recent memory, and given my track record, that's saying something.
The panic attack. The shower. Nate stepping in fully clothed like some kind of romance novel hero, holding me under the water like he was protecting me from the world itself.
Very dramatic. Very effective. Absolutely mortifying in retrospect.
Then there's the almost-kiss that I initiated like a drunk disaster person with zero impulse control.
Cool. Just casually tried to kiss my ex while having a breakdown in the shower.
Except nothing is fine, and I'm lying here with a headache that could kill a small horse, next to a man I definitely should not have in my bed.
Your therapist is going to have a field day with this one.
I turn my head slowly.
