Chapter 23 Stop Thinking, Just Feel

• After my last confession, I'd stripped her physically bare again, needing to expose her flesh to me, even as she tried to hide her inner thoughts from me. There was a stillness between us after my final words, a fragile quiet that felt like the air right before a breach in the storm, that fleeting, potent pause when nothing can be undone. I held her close—our breaths tangling with how little distance there was between us now. Her lips parted slightly, uncertain, eyes wide but unwavering.
• She was thinking. Calculating. The Quinn Pearce I’d come to know would search for solid footing here—the next intelligent question, the rational choice. But there was nothing rational about us, not now, not anymore. I had told her something most people would beg to die without knowing. And yet, she hadn’t run. Not yet.
• Her hands, delicate, tentative, rested on my chest. “You’re not going to get everything,” she murmured, but her voice wavered, unsure.