Page 203 of At First Catch

The raw honesty in the confession cracks my chest wide open. Fear that happiness is temporary.

I brush my thumb across his cheek.

“You don’t have to trust forever yet,” I whisper. “You just have to trust me enough not to push me away while you’re scared.”

Emotion flashes openly across his face as Nolan pulls me into his lap. The movement startles a soft laugh out of me before his arms tighten around me hard enough to steal my breath.

This man loves like he’s terrified of loss and overwhelmed by tenderness at the same time.

I wrap my arms around his neck while sunset burns gold across Back Bay behind us. And for several quiet moments, neither of us speaks. We just hold each other beneath marina lights and warm coastal wind while the world moves around us.

Then Nolan murmurs against my hair, “I’m trying to learn how to stay.”

The words break something open deep inside me.

It’s a choice he has to keep making over and over again against every instinct that taught him leaving first hurts less.

But it also makes me love him harder.

I kiss him beneath the fading sunset. And even while fear lingers beneath the surface of everything lately, for one perfect suspended moment, it feels like we might actually survive this.

Chapter Twenty-Five

NOLAN

The problem with finally having something to lose is that fear starts shaping every decision before you even realize it’s happening.

And lately?

Fear is everywhere.

It lives in repair estimates, insurance calls, storm projections, investor emails waiting unanswered in my inbox at two in the morning.

But worst of all?

It’s started living inside my relationship too.

Those thoughts run on repeat in my mind Monday morning while I stand in the marina office staring at architectural renderings spread across the desk.

Luxury expansion concepts.

Private membership docks.

Upscale restaurant redesigns.

Corporate marina branding.

Everything about the plans feels wrong.

Polished.

Expensive.

Soulless.

Like somebody took the heart out of Coral Bell Cove and replaced it with money.

Yet—the financial projections underneath those renderings would secure the marina for years.