Don’t look at his mouth.
Don’t you dare look at his?—
Past the mouth. To the face.
Roman Kade.
Asleep.
In my bed.
With my body wrapped around his like a vine that found the only warm surface in winter and committed to a hostile takeover.
Five seconds.
I give my brain five full seconds to present a reasonable explanation for this scenario. A logical, professional, entirely justifiable reason that my academy rival, my first crush, the man whose competitive fury defined the most formative years of my career, is lying shirtless in my four-hundred-square-foot apartment while I’m wearing?—
I glance down.
Whose shirt is this?
Navy flannel. Soft. Three sizes too large, the collar gaping at my shoulder, the hem reaching mid-thigh. Definitely not mine. Definitely not his—the fabric carries the faintest ghost of a scent that isn’t frozen pine but something brighter, citrus-adjacent, warm?—
Oakley’s.
I’m wearing Oakley Torres’s shirt in bed with Roman Kade.
The five seconds are up and my brain has produced exactly zero acceptable explanations.
I lift my hand.
And karate-chop his forehead.
The strike is reflexive, precise, and delivered with the specific biomechanical efficiency of a woman who has maintained her combatives certification every year since the academy. The edge of my hand connects with the broad plane of his forehead with a crack that reverberates through the mattress springs and produces an immediate, spectacular result.
Roman’s eyes snap open.
And he begins cursing in what I count as four distinct languages.
English arrives first—a sharp, guttural “Fuck!” that ricochets off the apartment’s thin walls. Then French—something rapid and nasal that involves the wordmerderepeated with escalating intensity. Italian follows, a string of syllables I can’t fully translate but whose tone communicates universal outrage. And then?—
I pause.
My hand still raised, my eyebrows lifting with the involuntary curiosity of a woman who has just encountered unexpected data mid-assault.
Was that Japanese?
Since when does this man speak Japanese?
I know Roman Kade’s linguistic capabilities. Or Iknewthem, a decade ago, when his repertoire extended to English, French from his mother’s side, and the Italian profanity he’d picked up from an academy roommate. Japanese was absolutely not in the catalogue.
“When did you learn Japanese?” I ask.
It is, objectively, the most random question to ask a man you’ve just karate-chopped out of sleep in your own bed. The appropriate inquiry would involve how he got here, why he’s shirtless, what happened last night, and whether I need to file an incident report. But my brain, in its fever-damaged, sleep-deprived, scent-saturated state, has apparently decided that linguistic acquisition takes priority over all other concerns.
And the thing is—the thing that makes something ancient and complicated twist in my chest—he answers.
Not with confusion. Not with “what the hell are you talking about.” Not with any of the reasonable responses that a normal person would produce upon being physically assaulted awake by a woman who hasn’t seen them in a decade.
