Page 81 of No Greater Love
My phone buzzed. Nate.
Nate
Set up a meeting for Thursday afternoon. Neutral location - coffee shop on Broad Street. You still willing to come?
Try and stop me.
Nate
Thank you. I love you.
I love you too. Even when you're being too honorable for your own good.
Nate
It's a character flaw.
It's one of the reasons I fell for you, you noble idiot.
Thursday. Two days to prepare for whatever manipulation Sarah was planning. Two days to figure out how to protect the family that had become mine without Nate realizing I was ready to go to war for them.
Because that's what this was—war. Sarah had fired the first shot with those legal papers. Now she was trying to draw Nate into negotiations, make him think this could be settled peacefully.
But I'd grown up with parents who used reasonableness as a weapon, who could make you feel guilty for having boundaries, who knew exactly how to phrase requests so saying no made you the bad guy.
I recognized the playbook, even if Nate didn't.
The front door opened, and I heard familiar footsteps. Nate was back already.
"Forget something?" I called out.
He appeared in the kitchen doorway, looking sheepish. "Yeah. You."
"I'm not a thing you can forget."
"No, but..." He crossed to me, pulling me into his arms. "I got halfway to dropping Paige off and realized I didn't kiss you goodbye properly. Felt wrong."
"You drove all the way back to kiss me goodbye?"
"Is that stupid?"
I stretched up on my toes to kiss him, slow and thorough. "No. It's perfect. You're perfect."
"Far from it."
"Perfect for me," I corrected. "Perfect for Paige. Perfect for us."
He held me tighter. "What if I mess this up? What if I make the wrong choice?"
"Then we'll figure it out together. That's what we do now, remember? Together."
"Together," he repeated, like he was still getting used to the word.
"Now go! You’ve got to drop Paige off at Zoe’sandget to work before Sophia writes you up for being late."
"She won't. She likes you too much to punish me."
"Don't test that theory."
