Page 17 of My Girl to Use

Zora

The first night, I almost don’t go.

I stand in my doorway for a full minute with Levi on my hip and my hand on the knob, running through every reason this is a bad idea, and then I walk the six steps down the hall and knock anyway.

He opens the door and steps back to let me in, and the first thing I see isn’t him.

It’s a portable crib. Set up by the couch, already made, a folded blanket over the rail that isn’t one of mine. It’s not new-new—the box is broken down flat against the wall like he did it this afternoon and didn’t bother hiding the evidence.

I stop in the middle of his living room.

“You bought a crib.”

“Picked it up a few days ago.” He says it like it’s nothing, already turning back toward the kitchen. “Thought it might help.”

A few days ago. Before he ever asked me over. Before I said no.

“Jax.”

He looks back at me.

“You bought a crib,” I say again, unable to keep the quiver from my voice.

He shrugs, one shoulder. “Also, I needed a reason to knock on your door.”

And that’s it. That’s all he gives me. He goes back to whatever’s on the stove and leaves me standing there holding my brother in the middle of a room that somebody made space for us in.

I lay Levi down in it. He fits like it was measured for him. I lower my head and sigh, wiping away the tear before it falls.

???

Dinner with Jax becomes a thing after that.

The second night, I cook, and he pretends the food is better than it is. The third, he cooks and it actually is, and I stop pretending I come over for any reason except this. By the fourth, I stop knocking. By the fifth, there's a stroller folded by his door that wasn't there before—he doesn't mention it, and I don't ask. By the sixth, there’s a toothbrush in his bathroom I didn’t put there.

A week of it. Levi lying down in the portable crib, the two of us sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch because the couch is too far from him. Neither of us says that out loud. Jax talks about racing. I talk about the daycare center and the toddler who bites. He asks what I’m reading and then actually reads it. Nobody has ever done that.

And every night, at some point, he kisses me. And every night it goes a little further and stops a little later, and every night I’m the one who stops it, and he lets me. Every single time. Without once making me feel like I owe him the next inch.

That’s the part that undoes me. Not the wanting. The stopping.

But tonight, I don’t want to stop.

I lay Levi down and stand there longer than I need to, my hand on the rail, listening to Jax moving around behind me. And then I don’t hear him moving anymore.

I feel him

. Right behind me. Close. Too close.

“You always overthink this much?” he murmurs.

I inhale slowly as a shiver grips me. Everything low in me clenches in response. My back stays turned. “I’m not overthinking.”

“Mm.”

His hand brushes lightly against my arm, barely there, but it sends another sharp, unexpected shiver through me. I turn. And the second our eyes meet, everything else disappears. The doubts. The logic. The voice in my head telling me this is too fast, too soon, too risky.

Gone.