I’m in the chair by the window, boots on, jacket draped over the back like a barrier I can step into if I need armor fast. My weapon is disassembled on the desk again—not because it needs it, but because routine is the only thing keeping me from replaying the moment my control snapped.
The kiss. The shower. The bed.
The way it felt less like a choice and more like gravity finally winning.
I don’t look at her. I don’t trust myself to.
The bed shifts. Sheets whisper. I feel it anyway—the change in the air, the quiet awareness that we’re both awake now, pretending otherwise.
She clears her throat. “Do you always wake up this early?”
“Yes.”
A lie by omission. I’m always up eventually. Just not usually because I spent the night dismantling my own discipline.
She sits. I catch the movement in the corner of my eye. Hair mussed. T-shirt wrinkled. Bare feet finding the floor.
Too human. Too close.
She goes to the bathroom. The door clicks shut.
I exhale through my nose, slow and controlled. Count to four. Count to six. Reset. Goddamn, what is happening to me?
The breathing exercises don’t help.
The shower starts. Steam creeps under the door. I remember the way she smelled last night—soap and heat and something darker that set off alarms I ignored.
I focus on the street below. Philadelphia is waking up. Commuters. Delivery trucks. Normal life. The kind that doesn’t wedge two people into a hotel room and ask them to pretend nothing changed.
The bathroom door opens again. She comes out dressed—jeans this time, hoodie pulled tight like she’s trying to disappear inside it.
“Coffee?” she asks.
“Sure.” I try for nonchalance, and fail … Horribly.
“Great. Love a man of words.”
She moves around the room, efficient, contained. We don’t mention last night. We don’t look at each other too long. We orbit like opposing magnets—close enough to feel the pull, far enough not to collide.
Coffee brews. The smell fills the room. I shouldn’t notice how domestic it feels. I do anyway. I can’t not notice her. She’s becoming a part of my DNA.
She hands me a mug without touching me.
Progress.
We sit. Opposite sides of the room. The silence stretches—not awkward, exact. Loaded. Like a weapon with the safety off.
“So,” she says eventually. “What’s the plan today?”
“Same as yesterday. We lay low. No movement until I get a green light.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then we wait. We stay dark.”
Her jaw tightens. She doesn’t like waiting. Fighters never do.
We spend the morning not touching.
