Page 87 of So Steady

“This is the same thing. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just…”

“Painful?”

Noah nodded.

“Okay.” Nicole licked her lips, thinking around the dilemma. “But you’ve told me a little about your past. You’ve told me I’m beautiful.”

“That’s just facts.”

“Shh, please be serious.”

“I am,” he said, picking up his cutlery. “I just don’t know if I can say what you need.”

Nicole picked up her own knife and fork and they ate for a while. Her crab was puffy and delicious. She’d eaten almost half when Noah spoke. “You seem happy.”

She looked up to see he wasn’t eating, just staring at his plate.

“I am.”

Noah nodded slowly, then cleared his throat. “Anything to do with me?”

She felt like her heart was going to burst, because in that moment a stone-grey cloud rolled back and she could see it. A future between the two of them.

“Everything to do with you,” she said. “You know what you make me feel?”

A raised brow.

“Steady.”

The brow rose even higher.

“It’s a good thing,” she said, abandoning her knife and fork and reaching out to touch his hands. “For ages, as long as I can remember, I’ve been up and down and up and down all the time. I want everything to be perfect and I try so hard to make it that way, sometimes I feel like I’m about to collapse. But being with you never makes me feel like that. You make me feel like I have my feet on the ground.” She laughed as she realised the contradiction in her words. “Not when I think about your past, but when I’m with you, here and now, I feel so steady.”

Noah stared down at their hands. “That’s a good thing?”

“Totally. If I was like dizzy and stupidly nervous, I’d be sure it was just infatuation, but it feels like there’s something else here. On my end anyway.”

Self-conscious, she sat back, tucking her hands into her lap like she was interviewing for a dream job. And maybe she was.

Noah looked up, knocking her sideways with his strange, contradictory beauty. “You saying you’re not infatuated with me?”

“No,” she said primly. “I said it’s more than that.”

“Good.” He picked up his knife and fork. “It’s more than that for me, too. Eat your crab.”

Nicole hesitated, wanting more reassurance and knowing it wasn’t something she could or should ask for. She picked up a crab leg and crunched. “Control freak.”

“You’ll find out what makes me a control freak after.”

Heat swirled through her and she chewed on autopilot, wondering if she’d be able to swallow another bite with so many butterflies in her stomach. She contemplated putting the rest in Tupperware, and if the crab would survive until Melbourne, when Noah pulled out his phone, swearing when he saw the name flashing up. Silver Daughters Ink.

“You got your phone on?” he asked.

She felt a stab of panic. “No, I turned it off so Tabby wouldn’t track my phone. Why? Do you think Sam and Tabby know we’re together?”

“Looks like it. I never get work calls this late.” His forehead furrowed. “I’ve got a heap of messages; I didn’t notice them coming in.”

“From who?”

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