I just have to decide what to do with it.
I look at Theo.
He's still looking at me.
I hold his gaze in the dark for a long moment.
Then I sit up.
"Prove it," I say.
My voice is quiet just for him. Cody doesn't stir. Beckett goes still beside me. Theo looks at me from the chair.
"Prove what," he says. His voice low. Even. The controlled version. The version I have been trying to crack since a library on the third floor.
"That you mean it," I say. "All of it. The margin notes, the strawberries, the pendant, and everything you said in this book." I look at him steadily. "Prove that I'm not something you planned for and executed. Prove that right now in this room it's real and it's mine and I didn't just walk into your trap. And in the end, I’m just a way to get back at Cody."
He's quiet for a moment and then he stands up from the chair.
His tall body crosses the room slowly. I don't move. He stops in front of me and looks down.
"Every single thing I have ever felt about you has been real," he says. His hand comes up to my face. His thumb at my jaw. "You want me to prove it."
"Yes," I say.
"Okay," he says.
He leans down and kisses me.
Beckett removes himself from the bed, and Theo’s body looms over me in the new space.
I reach for him and pull his shirt over his head. I let my hands map his chest, shoulders, and I feel the tension coiled in every muscle.
He catches my wrist.
Just briefly. His fingers wrapping around it, holding it still.
I look up at him in the dark.
"Are you sure, Adela?" he asks quietly. “Is this what you want?”
It's the first time I've ever heard him ask permission for anything. The first time I've seen him uncertain.
And I realize that this is what I needed to see. Not the performance. The person underneath it.
"Yes," I say.
His grip loosens. His hand slides up my arm, my shoulder, finding the side of my neck.
And then he lets it go.
Whatever control he carries in every room he's ever been in — it goes.
I feel it in the way he kisses me again, deeper this time, no restraint left. His tongue slides against mine and I open for him completely. Feel it in the way his hands move over me — not calculated, not strategic, just wanting. He cups my breast through my shirt, and I arch into his palm.
I've never seen this version of him.
The one that doesn't plan three moves ahead. The one that just feels.
