Page 171 of Texting, Trouble & Touchdowns
The peace lasts all of ten seconds before I ruin it.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
His fingers pause, just for a second.
“Of what?”
“That I’ll screw it up. That I’ll finally have something good and not know how to keep it.” I tilt my head, meeting his gaze. “The clinic. The house. You.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t joke or try to deflect. Just watches me with this quiet intensity, like I’ve said something simultaneously sacred and completely ridiculous.
“You know what I think?” he says, brushing a curl away from my face with a touch that makes my breath stutter. “We keep acting as if this is temporary. Like we’re just one well-timed panic attack away from blowing it all up.”
I don’t deny it. It’s true.
“I hope the house situation is temporary,” he continues. “Because I want you to move in with me. But we’ve gotta stop acting like one of us is gonna pack up and vanish.”
“Isn’t that what happens, though?” My voice is barely above a whisper. “Eventually?”
“No,” he says, firm and sure in a way I’ve never been about anything. “Not this time.”
My throat goes tight, but I don’t look away.
Lucian sits up, keeping me wrapped against him like I’m not going anywhere. He presses a kiss to my forehead, then looks around the room like he’s inviting me to do the same.
“You see this place?” he asks, gesturing to the living room, kitchen, and hallway that leads to his room. “It’s yours, or we can move to your place. I don’t care. As long as I can fall asleep with your cold-ass feet stealing my heat and wake up to yourconspiracy theories about who Sarah is trying to push off the bed at night.”
I let out a laugh that cracks at the edges.
He lowers his voice, a rare seriousness threading through his words. “I don’t want to be without you, Olivia. Not in this house. Not in this life. You’re my home.”
I close my eyes.
And when I open them, something inside me has shifted. He’s my home. Mine.
“We’re each other’s home.” He gives me a loving and reassuring smile.
And just like that, everything clicks.
We kiss. Slowly at first—like we’re both savoring the future. Then deeper, more desperately, with his fingers in my hair and my hands beneath his waistband because emotions make me grabby, apparently.
When we finally pull apart, flushed and breathless, I press my forehead to his.
“I’m still scared,” I whisper.
He grins, cocky and full of sin. “Good. Fear makes the orgasms better.”
“Lucian.”
“What? It’s science.”
I chuckle against his chest, already picturing the battle we'll have over closet space and whether Sarah will take the guest room now that I’ll stop pretending I’m just a guest.
We’re not perfect. We’re not bulletproof. But we’re us.
And right now? That’s more than enough.
Lucian taps my knee. “Okay, serious part over. Now I have questions.”
