“I’m not,” I whisper, which is only partly true because my heart is sprinting in place. “I’m cataloging.”
He laughs quietly into my shoulder. “Of course you are.”
“Bed. Light. Temperature. The way you refuse to give up an inch of blanket but still cover me,” I murmur.
He tightens his hold in answer and I pretend it’s coercion instead of the gentlest confirmation I’ve ever received. I lift our joined hands, study the press of his knuckles, the way our fingers lock. He’s bigger than me in every way that can be measured. Still, looking at our hands I only see the part that’s equal.
“Good morning,” he says, and the words are a kiss he hasn’t delivered yet.
The kiss follows—soft, unhurried, the kind that says we don’t need to prove anything to anyone this time. He rolls to his back; I follow like his chest invented gravity. The curve of his arm fits behind my head as if the pillow resents being unnecessary. He smiles down at me with the laziness of a man who has fought all night and finally put his sword away.
“What’s in your head?” he asks.
“A stupid number of things,” I admit, which is not like me; I prefer my lists alphabetized. “Us. My father. The guest who wore the chandelier as a necklace last night. The fact that I… feel different and I don’t have a category for the version of different that is happier.”
He makes a noise that is almost joy and almost grief. “Keep that version. If anyone asks for proof it exists, send them to me.”
I close my eyes and let the line land somewhere tender. “He’ll be waiting when we get home.”
“I know.” He strokes my hair, gentle. “We walk in together.”
“You don’t know his morning version,” I say, because the truth sits honest on my tongue in this room. “It’s quieter. His anger has edges but no volume. That’s worse than shouting.”
“I grew up in quiet houses,” he says, thumb pausing at my temple like a blessing. “I know how to hear knives someone forgot to put away.”
“You think this is a blade?”
“I think it’s love shaped like a blade,” he says. “And I’m not arrogant enough to insist he sheath it. I’m just not going to let it cut you.”
The knot in my throat swells and loosens all at once. “Breakfast might keep me from crying,” I say on a laugh because that’s the only alternative to proving I’m made of raw places.
“Breakfast,” he agrees, and reaches for the phone.
Room service arrives like a truce. Coffee so dark it looks like certainty; eggs that steam even in winter light; fruit that insists sweetness is available in any season if you order well. We eat on top of the covers, knees bumping under the tray, his ridiculous bedhead suggesting a life where mornings are allowed to be intimate without being emergencies. He watches me lick jam off a thumb and makes a sound that belongs in a chapel; I blush because old reflexes die slowly and he kisses the blush because new reflexes are learning fast.
“Are you going to tell me not to be careful?” he asks, eyes laughing.
“Not today,” I say. “Be careful with me forever. Be reckless for me in public.”
His face changes when I say public. The softness doesn’t leave. It shifts into something like resolve. “Copy,” he says, because of course he does, and the word feels like we invented it.
We dress without ceremony. That in itself undoes me. The night stripped us. The morning layers us properly and neither process feels like disguise. I step into the blue dress because there’s a pettypart of me that wants to walk into my kitchen glowing like a stoplight. He straightens his tie and I fix the knot. That tiny domesticity—the intimacy of fingers smoothing a line at his throat—makes my sternum ache in a way that has nothing to do with lust and everything to do with I want more mornings like this.
At the door, he lets his hand hover above the handle. “Last chance to send me away.”
“Not a chance,” I answer, and the way his mouth curves is a sunrise I swear wasn’t there a second ago.
We ride the elevator with the silence of two people who trust silence. In the lobby, someone recognizes him and raises a phone and then thinks better of it because the look on his face is all captain, no celebrity. Outside, the cold reminds us it owes no one kindness. He opens the SUV door; I let him. Some chivalry is theater. This feels like worship.
The city rolls by. We don’t talk much. In the passenger window I watch my reflection, rehearse sentences and discard them, not because they aren’t true but because they aren’t the right size. He rests his hand on my thigh, warm, grounding. Every time I remember to be afraid, his thumb draws a small arc that spells mine in a script only my body can read.
When we turn onto my street, the porch light is still on. Morning has no business wearing a porch light; it’s too honest for costume jewelry. The bulb’s stubborn glow feels like a father’s habit: make it easy to find your way back.
“Breathe,” he says, which is ridiculous because I am, but I follow the order anyway. It helps.
The key is colder than my fingers. I seat it in the lock. I don’t look at him. He doesn’t ask me to. The door opens on the smell ofcoffee and the careful stillness of a house that did its worrying in the dark and has chosen composure for the day.
Dad is in his chair. Not the formal one for guests; the one that has memorized his spine. He’s already dressed, though the jacket hangs over the back like he hasn’t decided whether a coach is needed this morning or just a father. His mouth is a line; his eyes are not.
