Her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “Not enough.”
The switch is small and clean. I step in. She tastes like peach and late hour and the spice of sleep-warm skin. I keep it soft because soft is a power people misunderstand. Her breath finds a new rhythm under my mouth. My hands find the small of her back and the curve under her ribs, places that anchor without trapping.
She crowds me on purpose, gentle push against my hips, a silent look at the edge of the island that saysthere. I turn us so she can lean a palm on marble and not fear the fall. We don’t try to be quiet; the whole house already knows how to listen without judging. When her fingers catch in my tee, I lift the hem and let her slide a hand under. Skin to skin isn’t about ownership; it’s about proof of life.
“I’m good,” she says against my mouth, clear. “I want this.”
“Say when,” I tell her.
“I will.”
We take our time. It’s not coy; it’s deliberate. She laughs once when honey catches on my lower lip and then catches it with her tongue. I let her lead with small instructions—slower, here, more—and I follow because some men are better at worship than command. The kitchen becomes small and private. The world shrinks to the glide of my palm under her hoodie, the press of her body finding my body without hurry, the kind of sound she makes when I murmur what I love about her into the place just under her ear.
“Tell me something true,” she whispers, breath hitching when I do exactly what she asked for.
I could say a dozen things that would qualify. I pick the one that has been burning a clean hole in me since the first time she looked up at me in the staff corridor like she dared me to underestimate her.
“I love you,” I say.
She stills—not pulling away, just absorbing. Her eyes are wide open. She searches my face the way she searches a room for exits. Whatever she finds there quiets a line in her shoulders.
“Okay,” she says, soft as water over stone. Then, firmer: “Okay.”
“I mean it,” I add, because I once held back every true thing because I thought it would scare people. She is not people.
“I know.” Her hand finds my jaw and holds it. “I love you, too.”
It should make me reckless. Instead, it makes me careful. I kiss her again with that in my mouth and she answers with a sound I’m going to hear when I’m an old man and can’t remember the names of the games we used to play. We keep going until the counter becomes ridiculous and our laughter starts tripping over our heat; then we take a breath and come down slow, chests touching, foreheads leaned together while the strip light does its best impression of candlelight. I hand her water because it’s what she always forgets when the world tilts the direction she wants. She drinks and grins like we got away with something.
“Now I’m hungry,” she says.
“You weren’t five minutes ago?”
“I’m hungry for something different.”
I make toast and she leans against the island and watches me like she’s cataloging the parts of me that do not require her to fight. I feel taller. I feel owned, but in that good way where being claimed is the same as being trusted.
The phone on the wall rings, the sound shrill and jarring in the quiet night.
We both look at it like it broke a rule. It’s the dedicated line that gets used when no one wants to risk a mobile being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I snag it on the second ring.
“Yeah,” I say, moving instinctively to put my body between Phoenix and whatever the world thinks it has coming.
“Mr. Locke?” The night manager. Marcy. She’s competent and doesn’t call unless she has to. “I’m sorry to ring this line. We have a situation with an employee and a police officer that needsa face. They’re in the front office. The officer is threatening a solicitation arrest. I’ve stalled. I can’t stall much longer.”
I feel Phoenix go very still beside me. “I’m coming,” I say. “Don’t let anyone take her into custody. Offer the officer coffee. Put them in my office and turn the thermostat down two degrees—makes people want to leave. I’m twenty-five out.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up. Phoenix is already shaking her head, already stepping into my space in that way she has when she thinks I’m about to choose safety over her.
“Take me with you,” she says.
“It’s late,” I say. “It’s the lobby. There’ll be whispers. You don’t need whispers.”
“I need to be useful,” she says. “I need to see the place. They know my face. Half of them think I’m a ghost story already. Let me be the one that shows up. I’ll stay behind you. I’ll do what you say. And if I need to sit down, I’ll sit down. But I want to go.”
This is the part where a younger version of me would say no and make a plan around the idea that I have to carry everything and everyone. That kid was good at breaking and at laughing too loud after. He was not good at letting other people be as strong as they are.
