"No. But I told myself it would until about Thursday."
"Thursday. You lasted one day."
"Day and a half. Give me some credit."
I laughed. An hour after someone had come at me with a knife, sitting on my grandmother's couch, and I was laughing because this man had admitted he'd fallen for me forty-eight hours into the assignment with the same flat voice he'd use to report a broken lock.
"I built this bar by myself," I said. "Solved every problem by myself. Told myself that was strength."
"And now?"
"Now I'm sitting here with a man who put someone through a wall for me, and I'm thinking the foundation was fine the whole time. I was just standing on it alone for no reason."
He was quiet. Then: "That might be the nicest thing you've said to me."
"Don't get used to it."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
I leaned into him. His arm came around my shoulders, easy and natural, and through the wall I could hear someone's stereo playing jazz and through the window the last of the daylight was going.
"I'm glad you were there today," I said.
"I'm always going to be there." A beat. "That came out smoother in my head."
"I know what you meant." I tucked into his shoulder. "Shut up and let me have it."
"Yes ma'am."
"I told you not to call me that."
"You've told me a lot of things. I've been selectively compliant."
"Story of my week."
IT STARTED WITH HIShand.
On my jaw, turning me toward him. Deliberate. His thumb traced my cheekbone and his expression was one I hadn't seen before: not the morning's heat, not last night's breaking point. Quieter. Steadier. A man who'd made a decision and was acting on it.
"Jenna." Just my name. It slowed everything down.
He kissed me. Careful and thorough, his hand on my jaw, his mouth learning me instead of consuming me. I reached for the pace I knew—the collision, the fierceness that had wrecked us on the bar—and he caught my wrists. Gentle. Firm.
"Slow," he said.
"I don't do slow."
"Tonight you do." His lips moved against my jaw. "Let me."
Let me. The word sat in my chest and pulled at something I wasn't ready for. He wasn't asking permission. He was asking me to trust him. To stop driving, to give him the lead and see where he took us.
I stopped pulling. A tension I hadn't known I was carrying let go.
He stood and held out his hand and I took it and he led me to the bedroom and the ten feet felt longer than the two blocks we walked every night. He undressed me standing by the bed. His shirt first, the annexed one, then the rest, his hands moving with steady patience. When I was bare he stepped back and looked at me.
"You're staring," I said.
"I'm aware."
