“Yes,” I say, smiling into his skin. “Because then it will be about us. Not about them. Not about what they took. About what we’re choosing.”
He swallows audibly.
“I will hold you to this,” he says. “After the fight. When you are ready.”
“After the fight,” I agree. “That’s the line we draw. We stop here now… and pick up the rest later.”
His hand tightens briefly on my waist, as if he’s imprinting the promise into both of us.
“Then it is decided,” he says.
The word settles over us like a blessing.
I let my eyes drift closed, fatigue finally catching up now that my body has something safe to rest against.
“Flavius?” I murmur.
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For… stopping with me instead of for me.”
His lips brush my hair. “We stop together,” he says. “We fight together. We choose together. That is what I want.”
It’s the last thing I hear before sleep pulls me under—his voice, steady and sure, and the quiet drum of his heart under my ear.
Tomorrow, I’ll chart timelines and draft complaints and decide whether to risk everything on truth.
Tonight, I rest in the arms of a man who holds both my sharp edges and my soft places without flinching.
We’re not running away.
We’re resting before the battle.
And when the fight is done—win or lose—we’ll come back to this bed, to this line we drew together, and cross it on purpose.
On our terms.
After the fight.
Chapter Nineteen
Sophia
For a second, I don’t know what I’m lying on—only that it’s warm and solid and smells like soap and cedar and something that feels like safety.
Then my brain catches up—chest, not pillow; arm, not blanket; breath slow and steady under my ear.
Flavius.
Last night comes back in a rush. His hands. My hands. His mouth on my breast, the way my whole body arched into him, the way we both could have kept going…
And the way we didn’t.
We stopped. Together. Not because we didn’t want more, but because we wanted it to be a choice, not an escape hatch.
Heat curls low in my stomach at the memory, but it’s threaded through with something softer. Rightness. Not the frantic grasping of my panic spiral yesterday, but something grounded.
“Good morning,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
