Knox nods. "That's usually how it starts." He pauses. "The outlet thing was smooth."
"It was about the charger."
"Ezra."
"It was mostly about the charger."
"Ride safe."
I ride home to the bar. The booth is empty. Mango is asleep on Vaughn's bike seat and I don't move her.
The bar settles into its nighttime sounds. I go upstairs and lie in my narrow bed and listen to the building breathe and think about a man whose heart was racing in a room full of lions and humans and who sat down anyway.
Almost normal,he'd said. Like it was a victory. Like being less afraid was something he'd earned by showing up and choosing to stay.
It was. He did.
My lion purrs all night.
Chapter 18
Nico
I can't sleep.
This is becoming a pattern. The Pinewood Inn ceiling, the HVAC hum, the ice machine cycle — I know these sounds the way I know my own breathing. They should be soothing by now. White noise. The auditory wallpaper of a man who sleeps in hotels most of the year.
But tonight my body won't settle. My skin feels electric. My brain is running a loop that isn't about spreadsheets or Coldwell or Langford for the first time in days. It's running a loop about a dining room table with mismatched plates and a man who saidI'll clear the outlet next to the boothlike he was rearranging the architecture of his life to make room for mine.
It's eleven-forty. I've been lying here for an hour and a half.
I showered. I brushed my teeth. I hung up the navy sweater. I did all the nighttime routines that are supposed to signal to my body that the day is over and it's time to shut down. My body is ignoring every signal.
I pick up my phone.
I have Ezra's number. He gave it to me this afternoon. EZRA, no last name, in my contacts. I could text him. That's the normal thing, the logical thing.Hey, can't sleep, want to talk.Simple. Direct. The way adults communicate.
I don't text him.
I open the app.
I haven't opened it since the night I found his profile. The night I readlooking for someone who knows the difference between efficient and lonelythree times and didn't tap. That was almost two weeks ago. I was a different person. I was a man who ate nachos and filed assessments and thought the difference between efficient and lonely was a theoretical question.
It's not theoretical anymore. I know the difference now. Days of efficiency in a hotel room, days of something else entirely in a bar that doesn't make commercial sense and never will.
I choose the app over the text because the app is where I found him. Because messaging him through the dating app says something that a text doesn't. A text saysI want to talk.The app saysI want you.
I type:Hey. Are you awake?
I stare at it. This is either a reasonable thing to do or the worst idea I've had since agreeing to a date with a man whose opening line was about my swim trunks.
Send.
The read receipt appears instantly. He was already on his phone. He has my number now. He could have texted me. He didn't. He was on the app. Waiting? Or just awake, the same way I'm awake, running the same loop?
Three dots, then:
Yeah. Can't sleep either?
