Page 44 of Stolen Harmony

“Easy,” he murmured, his hand hovering near my shoulder like he was steadying me. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied, breathless. But the truth was, I wasn’t fine at all. I was caught between laughter and longing, between the warmth of his jokes and the dangerous pull of wanting him anyway.

Kepler didn't move away. If anything, he settled more comfortably against the cushions, one arm draped across the back of the couch behind me. Not quite touching, but close enough that I could feel the promise of contact.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The air was thick, charged, the silence broken only by the distant call of a foghorn and the tick of the old clock on the mantle. My skin burned where his body heat radiated toward me, and I found myself studying the way the morning light caught the silver in his chest hair, the steady rhythm of his breathing.

“Rowan.” My name in his voice was a low hum, intimate. “Why did you really come here today?”

I hesitated, hyperaware of the way his thigh pressed againstmine, warm and solid. “I don't know. I didn’t even know you lived here. I was just... wandering.”

He shifted slightly, the movement making our legs press closer together. “Sometimes it's easier to stay moving than to let yourself feel what you're really feeling.”

I almost laughed, but it came out shaky. “Is that your professional opinion, Captain?”

He smiled, a flash of white teeth, but his eyes stayed serious. “Just a man who's run from his share of ghosts. You don't have to talk about it, but you can. If you want.”

His openness cracked something in me. I let out a shaky breath. “Everything feels wrong. I don't know who I'm supposed to be here. With everyone who remembers my mother as someone I should live up to, when I'm not even sure I know who she really was in the end.”

He reached out then, his hand settling on my knee—heavy, warm, grounding. “She'd be proud of you. Not because you've got it all figured out. Because you're still trying. Most people never even get that far.”

The heat of his palm radiated up my leg, rooting me to the moment. I wanted to believe him, wanted to lean into the warmth and strength he was offering.

“Why are you being so kind to me?” I asked, searching his face.

His hand moved slightly, thumb brushing against the inside of my knee in a touch that might have been accidental but felt deliberate. “Because I know what it's like to be adrift. To want something so bad it feels like it'll tear you apart, but to be too scared to reach for it.”

His touch was burning through the fabric of my jeans, making it hard to think, hard to remember why this was dangerous territory.

“How did you do it?” My voice was quieter than I meant. “After your wife died. How did you survive it?”

A flicker of something old and wounded passed over his face. He didn’t pull away—if anything, he leaned closer, so subtly I barely noticed until his shoulder brushed mine.

“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” he said softly. “Surviving it. Some days I’m not sure I did. Sometimes I still wake up reaching for her, and the empty space beside me feels like a hole that’s never going to close.”

He glanced at the photographs scattered across the mantle. “People think it gets easier. It doesn’t. It just gets… familiar. You learn to live with the ache. You stop expecting it to go away. You let it teach you something, or you drown in it.”

The words landed like stones in my chest. I swallowed hard. “Did you ever think about… trying again? Letting someone in?”

He laughed, low and humorless. “That’s the second trick. Letting yourself want again. I spent years thinking moving on meant betraying her memory. Punished myself, kept people at arm’s length. Safer than risking anything real.”

His thumb brushed slow circles over my knee. Too gentle to be an accident. Too steady to ignore. My nerves lit up, and I hated myself for noticing.

“Doesn’t sound very safe now,” I muttered, staring at his hand.

For the first time, his mouth quirked into something almost like a smile. “You’ve got my number, kid.”

I snorted, half laugh, half breathless. “Great. I’ll add ‘armchair philosopher with boundary issues’ to your résumé.”

“Put it under ‘skills,’” he said dryly, though his thumb never stopped moving.

Heat coiled low in my stomach. I forced myself to look at him, really look: the curve of his jaw, the shadows beneath hiseyes, the pulse jumping in his throat. His pain was written in every line of him, and still I wanted things I had no right to.

“How do you know when it’s okay to want more?” I whispered.

He turned fully, eyes bright, his hand sliding higher on my thigh. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just get tired of being lonely.”

The air between us was charged, heavy, inevitable. I could smell salt, coffee, and something distinctly him.