“Don’t you dare sell the Benz,” he says, his face is solemn.
I blink at him, thrown off by his intensity. “Excuse me? Are you suddenly a luxury car enthusiast, McKinney?”
“I am a mechanic’s son, Campbell. I know what’s under that hood.” A faint, lopsided smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. “That’s a twin-turbo V6. The compression ratio on that engine is a work of art. It’s got independent multi-link suspension. And those seats? That leather is nicer than the interior of most houses I’ve been in. You don’t sell a machine like that just because your old man has a shit personality.”
A breathless, incredulous laugh bursts from my throat. The sheer absurdity of Jake McKinney—grumpy, farm-boy, dirt-under-the-fingernails Jake—defending the mechanical integrity of my luxury sedan is enough to crack the ice in my chest.
“One, isn’t your dad a ballplayer? Since when is he the master of the garage? And two, does this mean you’re using me for my car now?” My voice cracks slightly as I try to keep my laughter at bay.
“Absolutely,” he fires back, his expression steady, selling the lie. Then his eyes haze, a devious smirk slipping acrosshis face. “I’m entirely in it for the heated seats and the turning radius.”
“You are ridiculous,” I mutter.
I uncurl my legs and lean forward, and before I can think better of it, I let myself fall against him. I collapse onto his chest, my forehead sinking into the crook of his neck, and he catches me instantly, his arms winding around my waist like steel bands, pulling my body flush against his. He feels massive, solid, and completely unshakeable. The heat radiating off him is all the comfort I could ever need.
“Fine,” I mumble against his collarbone, my hands clutching the fabric of his shirt. “I won’t sell the Benz. But you’re going to have to help me modify the trunk, because I’m probably going to have to live in it by next month.”
“Stay here.”
The two words are spoken directly into my hair, flat and absolute. They come out fast, too, like he’s been sitting on them, waiting for the moment.Thismoment.
I freeze, my breath catching in my throat. For a long, agonizing beat, the only sound in the studio is the low hum of his refrigerator and the heavy, steady thud of his heart beneath my face. I push myself up, resting my palms against his chest so I can look down into his face.
He stares up at me, his dark eyes intense, unblinking, and entirely devoid of the usual teasing humor. This is not the face I expected him to be making. He means it. He wants me to stay . . . here. With him.
“What?” I breathe out.
“Stay here,” he repeats, his grip on my waist tightening just enough to let me know he isn’t joking. “Move your stuff in. Sleep here. Live here. Don’t live in your car, and don’t look for some shitty, overpriced apartment in town just to prove a point.”
I stare at him, my analytical brain desperately scrambling to construct a fortress of logic to protect myself. My heart is drumming a rapid-fire cadence against my ribs.
“That is an incredibly bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I stammer, my legal mind failing me all of a sudden. “Because it’s too fast. We’ve been . . . whatever this is, we’ve only been doing it for a few weeks. It’s completely unprofessional, not that I have a profession anymore. And it’s reckless.
“This apartment is one room. You don’t have space for me. You have one closet, your bathroom doesn’t even have a proper door, just some sliding barn panel. We would be completely on top of each other. It’s a pressure cooker. I’ll drive you nuts!”
“I don’t care about the closet,” he says, his voice soft, his tone sincere.
“Be realistic. If we do this, there’s no safety net. If we explode, I’m homeless, and you’re stuck with a crazy ex-comms director sleeping on your floor. It ruins the dynamic. It changes everything.”
“Campbell.” He catches my face in both his hands, his thumbs resting on my cheekbones, forcing me to look directly into the raw honesty of his gaze. He looks slightly terrified, licking his lips as his gaze shifts from my left eye to my right. His jaw is clenched so hard that a muscle twitches in his cheek, and his chest heaves. Despite it all, he doesn’t pull back. He swallows hard, his dark eyes boring into mine. “Just stay. Because I like you here. Because I want you here.”
The air in the room shifts. It grows thick, charged with a strange, invisible energy that makes the skin on my arms tingle. It’s awkward, but it’s also the kind of heavy, profound discomfort that settles in your belly when someone finallydrops the mask entirely. Jake is letting me see him. His feelings. His thoughts. His fears.
“I like you,” he whispers, his voice trembling a fraction. “Imorethan like you.”
My breath catches, and my fingers curl tighter into his shirt. “You . . . you more than like me?”
Jake nods once, a quick, jerky motion, looking entirely exposed under the harsh light of his own kitchen bulb. He looks like he just called a high-stakes pitch and is waiting to see if the ball sails out of the park or nicks the corner of the plate.
“Yeah,” he croaks, his grip on my face softening, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw with a feather-light touch that sends goose bumps down my spine. “I more than like you a lot. And I don’t care how it looks to the front office, or what Kevin thinks, or any of the arbitrary rules we were supposed to be following. I’m tired of holding back, sneaking around. I’m tired of pretending you’re just the girl who handles the media, even if that’s not your job anymore. Just stay here. With me. Be mine, Campbell. We can be an us. Let me take care of this part.”
The dam breaks.
Everything I have been carrying—the sickening betrayal of my father using me as a pawn, the terror of walking away from my dream career, the adrenaline of facing down Jake’s family in that back yard—all collapses under the weight of his words. He is offering me shelter in the middle of a war zone, and I am entirely out of armor.
