She sat back on her heels, crossing her arms over her chest, naked and still somehow composed.“That wasn’t an invitation to move in or even stay overnight.”
I smiled despite myself.“Didn’t say it was.Don’t remember asking for an invitation.”
“Then—” she began but I cut her off.
“I’m staying with you,” I stated evenly, sitting up, forearms resting on my knees.“Until we figure out what we’re gonna do.”
She stared at me like she didn’t quite trust what she was hearing.
“You don’t get to just decide that.”
“Sure I do.You had a chance to answer my calls and discuss our options.You didn’t answer, so here I am.”
She scoffed.“You’re impossible.”
“Been called worse.”
For a long moment, she just looked at me.I could see the fight in her—the instinct to keep control, to protect her independence like it was a hard-earned medal.
Then, unexpectedly, her mouth curved.It wasn’t big.It wasn’t flashy.But it was real.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” she said.
I leaned back on my hands, smirk tugging at my mouth.“Great.’Cause baby, I don’t know what to do with me either.”
She laughed then soft, surprised, like it had slipped past her defenses.I stood and offered her my hand, pulling her up until we were close enough again to feel the heat between us without touching.
“What I know,” I shared, voice dropping, sincerity threading through every word, “is I’ve lived enough life to know when something is good, you don’t let it slip through your fingers.”My thumb brushed her jaw, not pushing, not claiming—just there.“And baby,” I continued quietly, “you’re the best thing I ever had a sample of.I can only imagine what we could be together.”
Her eyes searched mine, walls cracking but not falling.Not yet.
That was fine.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
Not this time.
Chapter16
Nita
Aweek passed before I realized I was smiling more than I wasn’t.It wasn’t the kind of grin that announced itself.It was subtle.Sneaky.Natural.The sort that lived in the corners of my mouth when I was reading emails or stirring coffee or listening to Dante hum low and off-key in my kitchen while he pretended not to know I was watching him.
We didn’t name what we were doing.We didn’t need to.
He stayed.I didn’t ask him to leave.That felt like enough of a truce for two people who had spent most of their lives bracing for impact.
On Monday morning, I logged into work from my dining table, hair pulled back, blazer over a soft T-shirt like I could fool the world into thinking everything was exactly the same.I told my supervisor I would be remote for the week, family situation, complicated but contained.
It wasn’t a lie.
Dante existed in the periphery of my days at first.Coffee already made when I emerged half-awake.Quiet presence behind me while I took calls.The steady weight of his hand on my lower back when he passed, grounding without demanding.
By the next Wednesday, he was woven in.We fell into an easy rhythm that surprised me.Mornings slow.Afternoons separate but connected.Nights were deliberate.Sometimes heated, sometimes just quiet conversation stretched thin by exhaustion and comfort.He didn’t push.
That was the thing that kept undoing me.This was a man who could bend rooms to his will by simply standing in them, and yet with me, he waited.Watched.Adjusted.
I never had that before.I took a call from Char on Thursday while Dante was out grabbing groceries.Her name lit up my phone, and for half a second, I considered letting it go to voicemail.Secrets had a way of rotting from the inside.I needed to tell her.I just wasn’t sure what the words were to explain.
