“He can try,” I say, not careless—resigned. “I’ll let him hit me once if it makes him feel like a father doing his job.”
She swats my chest. “That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking,” I say. “I won’t disrespect him by pretending he shouldn’t be angry. I’ll only disrespect you if I let his anger decide how I treat you.”
She studies me, suspicion and relief passing across her face like weather. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m very sure of you,” I correct. “Of what I want to be around you. That’s new. I’m enjoying it.”
A quiet minute. Then: “What happens now?”
“Now?” I thread our fingers. “You sleep while I watch the ceiling and try not to scare it by smiling.”
She snorts, the unguarded kind that makes my chest warm. “That can’t be the plan every time.”
“No,” I concede. “Sometimes I’ll be the one who sleeps and you’ll be the one who remembers the shape of the room.”
“And outside of rooms?”
“We’re careful,” I say. “We’re honest. We don’t make a show out of what doesn’t deserve an audience. We don’t apologize when we’re together. We apologize when we hurt each other and then we stop doing the thing that hurt.”
She considers that like it’s a contract. “Okay,” she says finally. “Okay.”
I kiss the back of her hand. “Tomorrow you text me if you want me near you at the gala. Touch the ribbon if you want me closer. Put it in your bag if you need me to sit at the end of the table and be good.”
“You’ll be good?”
“For you?” I nod. “Always.”
She nestles closer, her hair a curtain that smells like hotel shampoo and something that’s only her. The radiator ticks. Somewhere down the hall, a door thumps politely. The city hums its midnight hymn and leaves us off the chorus.
I let my eyes close, not because I’m tired—though I am—but because tonight deserves to end inside, not out on guard. Her breath warms my chest in slow, even cycles. I match them. My last thought before sleep takes me is a stupid prayer to a God I don’t often bother:thank you for the girl who walked toward me and the man who waited right.
If the morning asks us for something complicated, we’ll give it. If Wayne asks me for blood, I’ll hand him every apology I owe him and none I don’t. If she asks me to leave, I’ll go and keep the promise intact where it matters most: her choosing.
For now, I hold the woman I hunted without teeth and the night we made without lies, and I sleep like a man who didn’t ruin anything by wanting it.
Chapter Six
Sammie
Morning is a softer animal than night, but it still has teeth.
I know before I open my eyes that I’m not alone. Not from the weight on the mattress or the heat at my back—though both make a case for themselves—but from the way my body has decided to rest. That only happens when something in me believes it’s safe, even if the rest of me is busy arguing.
I keep my eyes closed and catalog the scene like a thief: the linen smell that isn’t mine, the murmur of the HVAC, the hush a good hotel has when it’s doing the work you came here to avoid. And him. The way his breath finds my shoulder in unhurried intervals, the way his hand is set on my waist like it isn’t claiming anything, just checking the world is where he left it.
“Awake?” he asks, voice low enough that it feels like a secret.
I make a noise that could be yes or no. It earns me a small laugh against my skin, and my stomach flips because he was careful last night and he’s careful now, and I want both the tenderness and the trouble it implies.
“I’m going to move,” he says. “And then I’m going to come back.”
I nod before I mean to. The bed gives as he slips away, the covers lifting and settling. The bathroom door clicks; water starts—a soft, quick rush—and stops again. He returns with a glass of water and the face of a man who slept but didn’t dare dream. Watching me, he sets the glass on the nightstand and slides in behind me, arm finding my waist like we practiced it.
“Hi,” I say into the pillow.
“Hi,” he says into my shoulder.
