His fingers close, warm and sure. The car is suddenly too small and exactly the right size. The driver turns left; the tires hiss over packed snow. My father’s voice lives in the back of my head and sayswatch your step.I look down at our hands and decide we’ve been watching it for months.
When the hotel looms up out of the cold, he lets go first. He always does. He follows me out of the car and into the lobby through a side entrance where no one notices two people who are not trying to be seen. The marble floor clicks under my heels. The air smells like orange peel and money.
He doesn’t touch the small of my back. He doesn’t reach for my elbow. He walks beside me to the elevators like the world’s most disciplined sin.
Inside the elevator, he finally looks at me fully. “Last chance,” he says.
“No,” I answer, clear and even.
“Good,” he says, and hits thebutton.
The numbers climb again. My stomach drops in a way that feels like falling and arriving at the same time. I find our reflection in the mirrored panel and memorize it—the woman in blue who stopped being sorry and the man who learned to be gentle in a life that didn’t require it.
The doors part. The hallway is quiet, carpet swallowing sound, lights low and forgiving. He leads me toward a door without checking the number because of course he doesn’t need to. His hand lifts, then drops. He stops half a foot from the handle and turns to me like the night asked him a question and he’s smart enough to let me answer.
“Say go,” he says.
“Go,” I tell him.
The keycard slides. The light turns green.
He opens the door.
We step through together.
Chapter Five
Triston
The lock clicks green and the door gives under my hand like a decision that was always going to be yes.
I don’t step through first. I hold it and let her cross the threshold ahead of me because that’s the order of things tonight—her choosing, me following. The room breathes warm air at us: muted light, a long window stitched with city glow, the faint clean smell of linen and citrus they pipe into places that promise to keep your secrets. The carpet hushes our steps. The outside world stays on the hallway like slush we won’t track in.
I set the latch with a soft, final sound that lands somewhere in my chest. She turns toward it, toward me, and the moment is a small gravity. The blue dress drinks the lamp’s gold and throws it back at me in a way that is indecent without doing a single indecent thing. I have captained through overtime and riots and grief; none of it asks me to be as composed as the sight of her just standing there, hands at her sides like she’s letting every part of her be visible at once.
“Hi,” I say, because I like the way small words make room for bigger ones.
Sheexhales, not quite a laugh. “Hi.”
Silence settles between us. Not awkward—alive. It paces. It looks from me to her and back again, and then it sits down to watch what we do with it.
I could cross the distance. I don’t. I look at her like a man who intends to narrate his wanting, not ambush with it. “Tell me what you need,” I say.
Her chin lifts the smallest degree. “For you to kiss me like you meant every look you gave me tonight.”
“That’s easy,” I say, and don’t move. “Anything else?”
Her mouth curves. I feel it like heat on my forearms. “For you to keep being careful even when I stop pretending I don’t want you to be.”
“That’s not hard, either.”
“It is,” she says, and the honesty makes my throat go tight. “With me, it is.”
“I know,” I say, and I let the words carry the weight of the promise—what I won’t do, what I will. “Then one more rule.”
“Of course there’s a rule,” she teases, and the teasing is a mercy: it means we’re both still breathing.
“Say stop and I stop,” I tell her. “Say slow and I slow. Say nothing, and I’m going to assume you want my patience even if your hands try to talk over you.”
