Then, her lips barely moving, a whisper so soft I almost miss it:
"I think I could love you. If you let me."
My heart stops. My breath catches. Something in my chest cracks open.
But she's gone. Unconscious, breathing deep, hand still wrapped around mine.
I stay until dawn breaks through her windows, pink and gold painting her face in colors that make her look like something holy.
Pink light cuts through the windows. Makes her look like something I'll destroy if I touch.
I carefully extract my hand from hers. Pull the blanket higher. Retreat to her doorway.
Not the hallway this time. Her doorway. Standing guard where I can see her breathe, watch her exist, make sure she's still here.
The walls I've built over fifteen years are starting to crumble. I can feel them falling, brick by brick, with every breath she takes.
"I think I could love you. If you let me."
The words echo in the morning quiet. She was drunk. Probably won't remember. But drunk words are sober thoughts, and the truth of it sits heavy in my chest like shrapnel.
I don't know how to let anyone love me.
Sofia tried. Built that sacred bond between us through training, through trust, through shared understanding of what we'd both lost. And I drove her away by making her too hard, turning her into a weapon instead of letting her be human.
Marisol is the opposite. All feeling, all chaos, refusing to be contained or controlled. Maybe that's why she terrifies me. I can't make her into something else. Can only watch her be exactly what she is. Beautiful, broken, brave enough to say things like "I could love you" to someone who doesn't deserve it.
She shifts in her sleep, mumbling something I can't make out. The sequined dress catches the dawn light, throwing tiny rainbows on the ceiling.
I should file a report. Should shower. Should do four hundred pull-ups until my hands bleed and I stop thinking about how she grabbed my dick and almost made me come in my pants, how she knows now, how there's no hiding what I want.
Instead, I stand in her doorway watching pink light turn to gold, watching her breathe, feeling my walls crumble with each passing minute.
All I'm counting now is breaths. Hers. Making sure each one comes. Making sure she's still here, still real, still offering something I don't know how to take.
"If you let me."
Three words that assume I have that power. That I know how to let instead of push, accept instead of control, love instead of train.
I don't.
10 - Marisol
He’s making his terrible military coffee when the memory hits me. His voice, rough with want: “I wanted to pin you against the refrigerator and find out what sounds you make when you come.”
I freeze in the doorway of the kitchen, one hand gripping the frame for support. The words echo in my head, sending heat pooling low in my belly despite the tequila still poisoning my system. My mouth tastes like death. My head pounds with each heartbeat. But my traitorous body doesn't care about the hangover. It only cares that this man, this impossible man, confessed to wanting me while I was drunk enough to grab his cock.
Oh God. I grabbed his dick.
The full memory crashes through me: my hand closing around him through fabric, feeling him hard, actually hard, for me. "You DO want me," I'd said, like some drunk detective solving the world's most mortifying case.
Nico looks up from pouring coffee, and his face gives away nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like last night didn't happen. Like he didn't carry me over his shoulder. Like I didn't molest him on a boat.
I don't know what to say. "So about groping you" seems too direct. "Good morning" pretends too much. I go with cowardly silence, moving toward the coffee maker like it requires all my concentration.
"There's aspirin on the counter."
I look. Two pills, a glass of water. Set out for me like he knew exactly when I'd emerge from my shame cave.
