Page 65 of Dissonance

“Turned out, he was worth knowing. Not really a dad, more like a best friend. I idolized him.” I stop, swallowing around the part that comes next. My hands still for a second. “His new wife wasn’t bad either. And then there was my little brother who’d hang off my every word.”

Nodding, she hums softly. “Did you like the SEALs? Am I allowed to ask that?”

I find my rhythm again before she notices the pause, thinking about it properly. The brotherhood, the missions, the trust that builds when your life depends on someone else’s.

“Aye. I did.”

“I bet your father was proud. Following in his footsteps, serving your country.” She draws a slow circle over the top of the water with one finger. “I always knew what I wanted to do too. I interned at my father’s company during college. First real job after graduation.” Her fingers slow. “But I watched the industry chew people apart. Artists with no one really in their corner. I didn’t want to manage people that way.”

“You don’t.”

She shrugs. “You’re biased.”

“Look at Cooper.”

She’s quiet for a beat. “That’s all I ever wanted. That’s why I started my own company. And for years, that’s all it was… Work. Building it, protecting it, making sure I was someone worth taking a chance on.”

My thumbs press at the base of her neck, more absent than deliberate now.

“I never really left room for anything else. No dates, no relationships…” Quiet laughter leaves her, but it doesn’t quite land. “I told myself that’s what was needed, and maybe years ago that was true, but I also think I just never…let myself want something I couldn’t plan for. Something I couldn’t control.”

A lot of things about Thea Calloway have always made sense to me. The precision, the distance she wanted to keep; it was never that she didn’t want more. It was that nothing was allowed to threaten the thing she was building.

I’ve never heard her say it like that before. Out loud, stripped of the professional lie she’d always hide behind. Because the truth is, no one cared about how Thea got to where she is. There’s a reason she was the one and only name that came to mind when Cooper needed new representation. Her reputation alone precedes her.

Twelve years, I spent telling myself she was choosing work, and if I’m being honest, I never pushed hard enough to change that. I was doing the same. Just two people who built their whole lives around not needing anyone, and somehow every single time, needed each other. A completely unsubtle push from the universe, yet we were both too stubborn to admit it.

Because I was never going to be the reason she lost what she was working so hard to have. Not when I was still drowning in everything that came after Calum. Not when my job kept me following Reign Cooper, never staying in one place long enough.

But she was always there. The laughter, the unguarded moments, the rare times she forgot she was supposed to be the one holding everything together.

Those moments were few.

Those moments were mine.

Sitting here now, watching her finally let go of the day under my hands, I know one thing with absolute certainty. There might not have been room before, but I’m going to fight like hell to make sure there is now.

Whether she’s carrying my child or not.

She turns, cheeks flushed from the steam, the candlelight making her glow.

“I’ve never…” she starts, then her fingers trail through the water again. “I’ve never let myself want something that might…derail everything.”

I don’t move, don’t breathe as the quiet saxophone fills the room. I’ve been trained to give nothing away under conditions that would break most men. A candlelit bathroom shouldn’t be the thing that undoes me now. But then her gaze lowers to my mouth, her tongue tracing her lower lip—barely there, a mere ghost of movement—water rippling against the porcelain as her fingers curl around the tub’s edge.

“Thea.”

She has no idea what she’s doing to me right now.

“Lockie, what’s—”

Her saying my name is all I need. I lean forward slowly, hand sliding to the back of her head. It’s the kiss I’ve been holding back since I found out she was having my baby, a simple brush of lips, testing the ground between us, feeling whether either of us is ready to stand on it yet. She meets me with the same trepidation, opening for me when my tongue traces the seam of her lips.

Her hands fist the fabric of my button-down and pull, and whatever careful resolve I had dissolves entirely. She drags me closer, the side of the tub digging into my knees, water sloshing over the side and soaking straight through my jeans. I barely register it, not when all I can feel is her silky, smooth skin slick and warm under my palms, not when the sounds she makes against my mouth are the ones I’ve spent weeks trying to stop thinking about.

Her hands move to my hair, gripping while I deepen the kiss and take everything she’s giving. And she lets me, that control she holds so tightly coming apart inch by inch, just for me. My cock thickens behind my zipper with desire so potent it’s almost possessive, the need to take more pressing in from every direction. If I move, it would be too easy for my hand to dip beneath the surface of the water, follow the curve of her body until I find that junction between her legs, and then this stops being slow.

The thought alone is enough to make my pulse roar in my ears, the voice inside me shouting yes, take, fuck, claim, to lift her from here, water and all, carry her down the hallway to my bedroom and stop pretending this has to go slowly.