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“Do you think that scares me? You think I don’t know what it means to feel like not enough? I lived there. I still wake up there. But I’m not afraid of being less anymore, so if I can do that, you can stop worrying about being too much. I want that too much.”
She closed the gap, grabbed the back of his neck, and stared into those burning, noble eyes. “You may be too much for everyone…but not for me.” She took a heavy breath, brushed her mouth over his. “I’ll be more than enough for you.”
Then she turned and walked away.
CHAPTERNINE
Nash didn’t move.Couldn’t. Her words echoed in his ears like a shot across the bow, complex and unrelenting.
Come for me if you want what’s real.
He braced both hands on the frame, forehead pressed to the cool wood. His breath came fast and shallow, like he’d just sprinted miles and wasn’t sure he’d stopped. She’d left the door open. Not just unlocked.Open.Goddamn her. No. Not her. Goddamnhim.
She’d stood her ground, fierce, certain, and it hadn’t been for him. It had beenbecauseof him. She’d delivered an ultimatum with quiet fire, and the regret would gut him if he let her walk away without answering it. The door wasn’t closed unlessheclosed it.
That sliver of space, that fragile, defiant slice of hope,beckoned.
He dropped his fists to his sides and backed away slowly. Turned toward the gym bag like it was the only thing keeping him sane. But sanity felt slippery now. His pulse thundered, blood too hot, thoughts a blur of too much. Her voice. Her body. Hertruth.
He hit the bag once. Twice. Again. Harder. Every strike shook his shoulders, echoed in his bones. Maybe, maybe, his fear had never really been about overwhelming her.
Maybe it was about losinghimself.
If he gave in, if he stepped through that door, there was no going back to who he was before her. No more coasting on autopilot. No more keeping his demons at bay with sweat and silence and strangers whose names he never learned.
She was asking for him, not the warrior, not the shield, not the mask.Him.The man beneath it all.
That meant he’d have to slow down. Stop running. Startfeeling.
To let her in, he’d have to sit still with what he’d buried. All the chaos, the ache, the ghosts of the brothers he’d lost and the ones he hadn’t. The rhythm of loss that had become his fucked-up world.
Stillness had always felt like surrender. But what if it was the only way to heal?
What if slowing down wasn’t weakness? What if slowing down meant honoring what they’d died for? He exhaled hard and sagged against the mirror. The reflection that stared back at him wasn’t calm or steady. It wasn’t even whole. It washuman.Raw. Broken. Wanting.
Maybe pain didn’t have to be his purpose.
He wiped the sweat from his face, pushed a trembling hand through his damp hair.
His body throbbed with want, every muscle still humming with the heat of her. His cock had been hard since she touched him, since she whispered that dare, since she laid him bare without laying a hand on his soul. He could still smell her, faint jasmine and steel, and it pulsed through him like voltage. Pure biology. Raw libido. A need that coiled deep and dark and so brutally honest he couldn’t breathe around it.
But it wasn’t just sex. It was hishearton the line now, and he knew it.
He’d prayed, once, for relief. For the ache to pass. For control. Today, he prayed for courage. How could he mourn them fully, when some part of him still believed they were dead because ofhim?
Grieving meant believing hehad the rightto, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe stillness wasn’t just terrifying because it forced him to feel. Maybe it was because feeling would meanfacing it.All of it. He wasn’t sure he could survive that.
But maybe that was the choice. Not surviving it,facingit. Letting the truth break him open, if that’s what it took to finally stop bleeding in silence.
At the shatter point, she was there, steady, unflinching, offering him not escape, butentry.Into something deeper. Something real. If he was going to fall, let it be into her. Let it bewithher. She’d delivered her ultimatum, and every part of him, heart, body, soul,wantedto answer it,neededto answer it.
He didn’t just want to take her.He wanted to drive so deep into her he wouldn’t be in pieces anymore.He wanted to come apart only to rebuild. To become.A man who didn’t fear breaking.Maybe everything falling apart wasn’t failure.Maybe it was the only way forward. She was waiting. Running wasn’t an option anymore. He waschoosing…her.
He didn’t remember walking upstairs.
One minute, he was panting in the gym, fists still curled from pummeling the bag like it owed him something; the next, he was outside his room, sweat cooling across his spine and the hollow ache in his gut spreading like fire.
He opened his door, stepped inside, and swallowed hard.She'd left the connecting door fully open.Just like she’d said. No more almost. No more cracks. All in, or not at all.