We walked up three flights because the elevator was still broken and I was in heels and by the time we reached my door my heart was beating so loud I was sure he could hear it. I fumbled with my keys because my hands were shaking, and he stood behind me close enough that I could feel his warmth, but far enough that he wasn’t crowding me. He was always doing that. Giving me space I didn’t ask for but desperately needed.
The door opened and I stepped inside and suddenly I was very aware that no man had been in my apartment since Imoved in. This was my space. My sanctuary. The place I came to decompress after the dungeon, after therapy, after the cage.
And now Quest Banks was standing in my living room looking around like he was reading a book I’d written without knowing I was writing it.
“This is you,” he said.
It was me. The orange accent wall I’d painted myself on a Saturday afternoon with Erykah Badu playing and a joint burning on the windowsill. The black and white photos I’d framed and hung in a gallery arrangement—portraits of beautiful Black women I’d collected from thrift stores and vintage shops, women whose names I didn’t know but whose faces made me feel seen. My navy blue leather sofa that I’d saved for three months to buy because I wanted something that felt substantial when I sat on it. The green plants on every surface—pothos on the bookshelf, a snake plant in the corner, a monstera by the window that was growing wild because I talked to it more than I talked to most people. And my coffee table—an abstract piece shaped like an Afro pick, black iron with a glass top, that I’d found at an art market in Southeast and nearly cried over because it was perfect.
“You want something to drink?” I asked because I needed to do something with my hands or I was going to crawl out of my skin.
“Whatever you’re having.”
I poured us both red wine. A Cabernet Sauvignon that Zainab had given me months ago that I’d been saving for I don’t know what. I handed him his glass and our fingers brushed during the exchange and the contact sent something warm up my arm and into my chest and I took a sip to cover whatever my face was doing.
He sat on the sofa and I sat on the other end, leaving a full cushion of space between us because I wasn’t ready toclose it yet. I needed to ease into this. I needed to feel safe in the transition from woman-who-said-don’t-go-home-yet to whatever came next.
“You were wrong tonight,” I said. “For stepping in like that.”
“We already been over this.”
“I know. But I need you to understand why it bothered me.” I looked at my wine instead of at him. “Every man I’ve been with has taken something from me. My father took my freedom. Ahmad took my body. Thad took my trust. And they all did it under the excuse of protecting me or loving me or knowing what was best for me. So when you stepped in tonight and handled something that was mine to handle, it triggered something in me that doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s about every man who came before you who used his strength to take away my choice.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then he set his glass down on the Afro pick table and turned to face me fully.
“I hear you,” he said. “And I’m sorry it triggered that. But I need you to hear me too. I’m not those men. I don’t hit women. I don’t control women. I don’t take shit from women that they don’t offer. But I will always—always—step in when somebody puts their hands on you. That’s not about control. That’s about me. That’s who I am. And I’m not going to apologize for it.”
“I’m not asking you to apologize.”
“Then what are you asking?”
I looked at him. Really looked at him. “I’m asking you to be patient with me,” I said. “Because I want this. And wanting things terrifies me.”
He reached across the cushion between us and took my wine glass out of my hand. Set it next to his on the table. Then he took my hand, brought it to his mouth, and kissed my knuckles. One at a time. Slow. His lips warm and soft and deliberate againsteach knuckle like he was counting them, like each one was a promise he was making without words.
I leaned into him. He met me halfway.
The first kiss was gentle. Testing. His lips on mine, soft, no tongue, just contact and warmth and the taste of wine between us. He let me lead it for about three seconds before his hand came up to the side of my face and he deepened it, and when his tongue touched mine something in my lower belly caught fire and I inhaled sharply through my nose because the sound I almost made was not a sound I was ready to make in front of this man.
But my body had other plans.
The kiss went from gentle to urgent in the span of a breath. His hand slid from my face to the back of my neck and he pulled me closer and I went willingly, climbing over that cushion of safety I’d put between us and settling into his lap with my knees on either side of his thighs. His hands found my waist through the dress and his grip was firm but not rough, holding me steady, not holding me down. There was a difference and my body knew it even if my brain was still catching up.
I reached for the buttons on his shirt because instinct was kicking in, and the instinct was the same one I’d operated on with Thad—take control, get on top, run the show. My hands moved to his chest and I pressed him back against the sofa and tried to pin his wrists above his head the way I did with Thad, the way I would with any man, because being on top was the only way I knew how to be intimate without panicking.
“Nah,” he said against my mouth. Calm. Not aggressive. Just certain.
He took both my wrists in one hand, gently, and brought them down between us. Then he looked me in the eyes and I could see that he understood exactly what I was doing andexactly why I was doing it and he wasn’t going to let me hide behind it.
“You don’t have to be in control with me,” he said. “I got you.”
“Quest—”
“I got you. Trust me.”
He lifted me off his lap and laid me back on the sofa and the panic flared for a second—being on my back, being underneath, being pinned—and he must have seen it in my face because he stopped. Hovered over me with his weight on his arms, not on me, and waited.
“You good?” he asked.
