“So… what do you want to do today?” He reached for his coffee.
“I’m not sure. We can’t really go anywhere. People might see us.”
“I’m always good to Netflix and chill a little more,” he offered, smirking.
I winced, adjusting in my chair—my lower half loudly objecting. “Yeah… I’m gonna have to pass this time.”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “You were really getting the hang of it.”
“What do you mean, getting the hang of it?” I demanded.
His grin turned wolfish. “I don’t like to toot my own horn or anything…”
I flicked mustard greens at him.
He caught it in his mouth with that infuriatingly pleased look of his.
“You’re such a weirdo.”
“But I’m your weirdo,” he shot back, swallowing grimly.
“You are, huh?”
His expression gentled. “I have been since the beginning, Emma. Whether you claim me is another thing.”
I folded my arms. “Claim you?”
“Yes.” Simple. Certain. “Claim me.”
“As what?”
“Whatever you decide,” he murmured. “I’m not in a rush. I just want you to know I’m here.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I’ll still show up begging for food like an abandoned dog. Eventually you’ll crack.”
I laughed, startled and warm. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you two forming a support group for that bird isn’t?”
“It fell into a wine glass, Damien. That bird had a harder night than both of us.”
He brandished his fork like a prosecutor. “That bird was drunk off my expensive cabernet. And did it thank me? No.”
“It’s a bird, Damien.”
“An entitled one!”
We carried on like this—past breakfast and an extremely early lunch. Past Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
Me slipping into his building after work like a secret I couldn’t stop touching. Him walking me out at dawn, always a few steps behind or ahead so the doormen wouldn’t talk. Staggered exits. Separate cars. Pretending we hadn’t spent the night wrapped around each other.
And through it all, we floated in something dangerously close to domestic bliss—shared coffees, half-burnt eggs, emails from his kitchen table. Nights falling asleep on his terrace or tangled in his sheets, the city humming below us like a secret.
For nearly four days, real life stayed politely at the door.
***
