"Your bed is a fire hazard," Grant said. "My knees are in a different zip code."
"It's cozy."
"It's a cot."
"It was fine before you showed up and inflated it with your—" she gestured at his entire body—"dimensions."
The deadpan appeared. "Did you just call medimensions."
"You know what I mean." She was laughing against his skin, and the vibration of it made something settle in her chest—the restless hum that had driven every reckless decision since September, quiet for the first time. Not gone. Just resting.
Grant sat up. Then stood—with an energy no human being should possess after what they’d just done—and smacked her on the ass.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Emmy’s mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”
“My place. Now.” He was already pulling on his jeans, moving with the efficient focus of a man running a no-huddle offense. “I’ve seen your shower, Em. There is no physical configuration of my body that fits in that shower.”
“It’s a perfectly adequate shower.”
“I’ve seen more room in an MRI tube.” He tugged his shirt over his head—inside out, not that he noticed or cared. “My shower fits two people. My bed is a king. And I have plans for you on every surface between the front door and the bedroom, so we’re going to need square footage.”
Emmy stared at him from the bed, still boneless, still buzzing, her brain struggling to process that this man had just taken her apart twice and was now standing in her bedroom looking like he was ready to do it four more times.
“Every surface?”
“You have no idea.” The deadpan was back, but his eyes were anything but. “Just wait until you see what I can do with some actual room to work.”
Emmy bit her lip. The laugh was coming and she couldn’t stop it. “We have to walk past Mrs. Jasinski’s door. She’s going to tell everyone in the building.”
“Sweetheart, the whole building already knows.”
Emmy looked up at him from the bed—the messed hair, the inside-out shirt, the mouth that was doing something it almost never did, which was smile without irony.
"Is this real?" she asked.
He leaned down. Tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Yeah, Em." His voice was quiet. "This is real."
His brownstone was twelve minutes away. It smelled like home.
The shower fit two people. He hadn't been exaggerating
It was the best Christmas morning of Emmy Woodhouse’s life, and she hadn’t even opened a present.
Emmy was curled into the corner of Grant’s leather couch in one of his T-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants cinched at the waist with a hair elastic—the shirt still smelled like detergent and him, a combination she was going to have to develop a tolerance for or she’d never leave this apartment. She’d borrowed his comb, found concealer in the bottom of her bag, and done enough damage control that she looked like a woman who’d slept well rather than a woman who’d slept spectacularly little. She balanced her laptop on a throw pillow and FaceTimed her parents while Grant was in the kitchen making coffee in the French press he kept on the counter—the quiet morning ritual she’d heard him describe five months ago in a diner booth when she’d asked what his ideal Sunday looked like.
Quiet. Maybe some music, but low. I'm making coffee. The good stuff. She's just... there.
Her dad answered first. His face filled the screen—glasses slightly crooked, wearing the cardigan Serle had given him lastChristmas, already looking like a man who'd been monitoring multiple health apps since dawn.
"Emmy! Merry Christmas. Your mother is—Karalyn! It's Emmy." He peered at the screen. "You look nice, sweetheart. Is that one of West's old shirts?"
"No," Emmy said, and felt her face go hot. "Merry Christmas, Dad."
Her mother appeared over his shoulder, coffee in hand, reading glasses pushed up into her hair. "Merry Christmas, sweetheart. You look—" She tilted her head. Did that half-second assessment that Emmy had inherited and weaponized. "You look rested."
"I slept well."
