Page 56 of Offside

He reached his arm around my waist, and I let him pull me back against his chest without making anything of it.

“I’ll sleep better wrapped around you,” he said, low, like he was telling himself as much as me.

I didn’t answer. I just let myself settle into him—the warmth of his skin, the steady weight of his arm, the smell of him that I’d been trying not to let myself notice for three months. My shoulders dropped. My breath slowed. I let out a long exhale and felt his arm tighten around me, just slightly, just once, like he’d been waiting for it.

He kissed my exposed shoulder softly and exhaled against me. I leaned back against him. Outside, Scottsdale was dark and indifferent, and inside my lamp threw its small warm light and Ryan Lindqvist was in my bed with his arm around me, solid and present and not going anywhere.

I stared at the ceiling with the quiet, certain, entirely inconvenient understanding that nothing about this was going to be simple, and that I didn’t want it to be. Nine years. I’d waited too, and him savoring me the way he had was more than anything I’d ever experienced in my life.

I’d spent eight months since Josh making careful decisions. Choosing dates who were uncomplicated, keeping myself out of situations that I might have to change myself to be a part of. I’d told myself I was being smart. I’d told myself I’d learned.

What I hadn’t accounted for was Ryan Lindqvist, who had walked into this building in August already too many things at once. Too careful and too attentive and too steady, too consistent and present to make keeping a professional distance feel possible without actively working at it every single day. I’d been working at it. Mostly.

I wasn’t working at it anymore.

His thumb was moving slowly against my hip. I could tell from his breathing that he wasn’t asleep. He didn’t fall asleep easily. I’d noted it months ago, before any of this, when he was just a patient and he told me about his sleeping habits. He was lying here thinking the same way I was, and neither of us was saying it, and that meant something.

“Hey,” I said, into the quiet.

“Yeah.”

“Nothing.” I pressed my face briefly against his shoulder. “Just checking you were still here.”

His arm tightened around me. Just that, no words, no explanation, just the weight of it settling.

I closed my eyes and let myself have it.

CHAPTER 13

RYAN

I was awake before she was. That was the first thing. The quality of pre-dawn quiet in a house that had another person breathing in it, different from my usual silence in a way I couldn’t have articulated but felt immediately and relaxed at the thought.

I lay still. Her head was against my shoulder, her hair spread across the pillow, one hand curled loosely against my ribs. I’d slept better than I had in months, which meant I’d also been awake earlier than I wanted to be, lying there in the navy blue before sunrise being more aware of her than was probably wise.

She woke slowly. I felt it. The slight change in her breathing, the shift of her weight, the moment she became conscious of where she was. I kept my eyes closed and waited.

I knew what was coming. It was almost expected. The recalibration of the morning after, the brain reassembling everything and deciding what to do with it. I’d done it myself enough times to recognize the stillness before she assembled the previous night’s events into something manageable. Her body stiffened.

I gave her thirty seconds. Maybe forty. Then I tightened my arm around her, pulling her against me.

“Stop,” I said. Eyes still closed.

She inhaled sharply. “Stop what.”

“Whatever you’re doing in your head right now.” The wheels were turning and the tension in her body was palpable. That was Maren. Her silences had texture and this one was a brick wall she was putting up. “I can feel you thinking.”

I opened my eyes.

She opened her mouth.

“Maren.” It was a warning tone. I turned my head to look at her. She was watching me with the expression she wore when she’d been caught doing something she hadn’t meant to do. “Stay where you are. I’ll make some coffee.”

She held my gaze. Her expression changed. Not much, just enough.

“Okay,” she said, then let out a breath.

“Okay, good.” I pressed my lips to her hair, brief and certain, and then I got up to find the coffee.