He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, that small, unhurried gesture I’ve cataloged carefully, the one he does without thinking, the one that suggests touching me is as natural to him as breathing, and he’s stopped questioning it entirely.
“I’m not asking you to stop being sensible,” he says. “I’m asking you to be sensible and still choose this. Both things at once.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s the simplest thing I’ve felt in years. The outside of it is complicated. The actual thing? Simple.”
I close the remaining distance.
He kisses me the way he does everything when he’s decided, with total commitment, one hand sliding into my hair and the other finding my waist and pulling me in until there’s no gap left between us. I fist my hands in his shirt and kiss him back. The day’s accumulated weight dissolves the way it always does when we do this. The blogs, the burner screenshots, and my father’s careful professional distance fall away until there’s nothing left but his warmth and the specific, devastating certainty that this man has worked his way past every defense I built.
“Bedroom,” I say against his mouth.
“You sure?”
“I’ve been sure since you walked in with my favorite food order.”
He laughs, that rough-edged, genuine laugh, and I walk backward down the hallway pulling him with me.
My room is warm, the string lights on, the city a low hum outside the window. He pulls the door closed behind us and looks at me the way he looked at me the first time, as if I’m something he can’t quite believe he gets to stand near.
“You’re still doing the thing,” I say.
“What thing?”
“Looking at me like I’m an event.”
“You are an event.” He reaches for the hem of my shirt. “Can I?”
I lift my arms in answer.
He takes it off slowly, sets it aside, and runs his hands from my shoulders down my arms with a kind of reverence that makes my throat tight. His eyes move over me, and he shakes his head slightly, a small private thing, as though he’s resolving an internal argument.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” He presses his mouth to my shoulder, the curve of my neck, the place below my ear that he has learned with infuriating precision. “Nothing except you.”
I pull his shirt over his head and run my palms across his chest, the lean muscle, the surgery scar I kissed before, the ribs where my ink is settling into his skin. I spread my hand flat over the design and feel him breathe.
“How’s it healing?” I ask, purely professional.
“Ava.”
“I’m serious. The—”
“Healing perfectly.” He tips my chin up. “Ask me again in the morning.”
Then he kisses me again, deeper, walking me back toward the bed, and I stop asking.
The back of my knees find the mattress, and I pull him down with me. The full, warm weight of him settles over me like something I’ve been waiting for without knowing I was waiting.
He doesn’t rush. This is the thing about Reece that undoes me every time. His patience, the way he moves with the same deliberate precision he brings to everything, the total absence of urgency in the hands that map my body as though he has all the time in the world and intends to use every second of it. His mouth traces down my collarbone, across my sternum, and I arch up into him with a sharp intake of breath.
“You’re thinking,” he murmurs against my skin.
“I am not.”
“You are.” He raises his head and looks at me with those eyes that see too much. “Stop.”
