Page 196 of At First Catch

“And Sweetspire has always been one of the biggest pieces.”

Silence settles between us.

Then Nolan reaches over and threads his fingers through mine.

“I’d like to see it.”

I blink.

“The folder.”

His thumb brushes lightly across my knuckles.

“When you’re ready.”

Something inside my chest loosens.

“Okay.”

He squeezes my hand once.

“I have a feeling it’s going to matter more than you think.”

“Every decision feels like one wrong move away from costing somebody something.”

“You know what I think?” I ask.

His gaze shifts toward me.

“I think you finally found something worth staying for.” Emotion catches in my throat. “And now you’re terrified you’ll fail hard enough to lose it.”

Nolan goes completely still beside me, then exhales toward the water.

“Walter basically said the same thing earlier.”

I smile faintly.

“Smart man.”

Nolan’s shoulder brushes mine lightly against the railing. Enough contact to warm every inch of me.

At this moment, I understand something important. Nolan isn’t pulling away because he loves me less. He’s pulling inward because loving me this much terrifies him.

Nolan glances toward me again, exhaustion and love and uncertainty tangled together openly across his face.

“I don’t need you to stop being scared,” I whisper. “I just need you to stop trying to survive it alone.”

Nolan’s eyes grow double in size, the emotional weight of my words sinking in.

His hand finds mine against the railing. And this time when he holds on—it doesn’t feel like protection. It feels like trust.

Chapter Twenty-Four

HADLEY

The strange thing about emotional conflict with someone you truly love is that the world doesn’t stop afterward.

You still wake up together. Still reach for each other half asleep. Still know exactly how they take their coffee. And that normalcy makes everything feel even more fragile.