“Come in,” she whispers.
I follow her inside.
The door closes softly behind us.
Chapter Eighteen
Sophia
The door clicks shut behind us, and the quiet is immediate.
My room has never felt this small.
Log walls. Tiny kitchenette to the left. Table with two hand-hewn wooden chairs. The queen bed tucked under the window, a cozy pastel quilt covering it like it does every day, waiting for me to return alone.
I turn the deadbolt without thinking.
When I spin around, he’s standing only a few feet away, big and solid and suddenly looking uncertain in a way I almost never see.
“This okay?” he asks softly, his gaze sweeping the room, then resting on me. “Me being here?”
His voice is careful, as if he’s testing each word before letting it out.
Emotion squeezes my throat. “Yes. I… yes. I asked you.”
He nods once, like that matters, like the fact I asked is the most important piece.
It is.
I take a step toward him, then another, and now I’m close enough to smell him—soap and sweat and the faint metallic tang that never quite leaves, no matter how many centuries it’s been since the arena.
For a beat, we just stand here, looking at each other.
The day presses in—Blackwell’s paper, my mother’s dismissal, the way my own career feels like it’s hanging from a fraying thread. If I let myself keep thinking about all of it, I’ll disintegrate.
“I keep… replaying it,” I admit. My voice sounds too loud in the small space. “The paper. The submission date. My proposal. Every ‘our framework’ she ever wrote. It’s like a loop I can’t turn off.”
His brow furrows. “Do you want to talk more? Or do you want… quiet?”
The way he says it—offering options, not assuming—eases something tight in my chest.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Talking helps. Sitting with you helps. Everything else feels like sandpaper on my nerves.”
He glances at the small table, then at the bed, and then hesitates as if both options are suddenly complicated.
I realize I’m just… standing here, unsure of where to put my hands, unsure of where to begin. My body feels caught between wanting to collapse and wanting to reach for him.
“Sit,” I say, gesturing toward the bed before my brain can overthink it. “It’s the only comfortable thing in here. The chairs are terrible.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Terrible chairs I understand.”
He moves to the bed and sits on the edge, careful, like he’s trying not to take up too much space, which is ridiculous because he takes up space by existing.
I hover for a second, then sit beside him, leaving a few inches between us. The mattress dips under his weight, tilting me toward him.
My hands immediately start their tapping pattern against my thighs—four fingers, thumb, repeat, repeat. I try to stop. Fail. Try again.
He doesn’t flinch at the stimming. He never does.
