We go home.
41
JACE
3 months later…
Maya is on her Zoom call and I can't stop looking at her.
I'm leaning against the office doorway with my arms crossed and absolutely no intention of being anywhere else. The afternoon light through the window catches the thin strap of her sundress where it meets her shoulder, a line of warm gold against skin that has finally seen enough Montana sun.
Summer in Briarhaven means Maya in fewer layers of clothes. This is both the best and worst development of my year. I adjust myself against the zipper in my trouser.
She's nodding at whatever her editor is saying, her pen moving in small circles over the notepad beside her laptop, the idle sketching she does when her mind is tracking two things at once.
I can see her shifting in her seat. Subtle. A roll of her hips, a slight readjustment, the kind of movement that reads as discomfort to anyone who doesn't know what I know. And I know exactly why she's squirming, because twenty minutes before this call started I had my mouth between her thighs andafterward I slid a butt plug inside her and told her to keep it in, and the look she gave me was equal parts fury and heat and the specific defiance that has become my favorite thing about her.
She catches me watching. Her eyes narrow. A look that promises retaliation delivered with the composure of a woman conducting a professional meeting while sitting on something her boyfriend put there. I grin. She looks away. Her cheeks flush and she angles the laptop screen so I can't see her face.
Three months since we walked into Daniel Hargrove's office. Three months since Maya stood four feet from the man who turned her life into a nightmare.
Turns out she wasn't the only one.
The interview landed like a match in dry brush. Within forty-eight hours, two other women contacted Elena Voss through the Atlantic Ledger's tip line. Then a third. Then a fourth. A pattern so clean that everybody could see it for what it was. Daniel did the same thing to other women, across years, believing each woman's silence was a guarantee. He miscounted. The women found each other the way survivors do once one person says the thing out loud, and now Daniel Hargrove is spending his days in meetings with criminal defense attorneys rather than investment clients, and the corner office with the floor-to-ceiling views is occupied by someone else.
Maya doesn't track his legal proceedings. She made that decision early, cleanly, with the precision she brings to everything she's decided to stop carrying. "His consequences are his," she said, sitting on the porch one evening with her feet in Owen's lap and her head against my shoulder. "I did my part. I'm done with him."
Owen appears beside me in the doorway.
"It's confirmed," he says low, so Maya doesn't hear. "Her parents land at ten tomorrow. Reid's doing the pickup."
"Vivian still bringing theempanadas?"
"She mentioned it twice in the last phone call, so I'd say yes."
"Good." I mean it.
Maya's parents were hesitant at first to see their daughter in such an unconventional relationship. But once they saw how much we love each other, they accepted us and welcomed us as their sons.
They're coming to visit for two weeks. Ray's cardiologist cleared him for travel last month. The man is stubborn and tough and recovering in the way that quiet, determined people recover, which is to say completely and without drama.
One other good thing that happened in the past three months is that the investment fund deal didn't go through. Not because they backed out. They were still pretty much interested. But, because this situation with Maya made us realize that we don’t want to condition our lives to what others might think about us.
Maya wraps up her call. I hear the professional warmth in her sign-off, the specific voice she uses with editors and clients, capable and bright. She closes her laptop. Pushes back from the desk and come meet us at the doorway
She walks over. Slow. Deliberate. Hips moving in a way that is absolutely intentional and absolutely for my benefit, and my mouth goes dry because I have been with this woman for months and she still takes the floor out from under me every time she decides to.
I reach for her. Pull her in. My hands find her waist and then my mouth finds hers and the kiss isn't gentle. It's thorough. She gasps against my lips, and my hand slides down her back, finds the base of the plug through her dress and presses.
She gasps. Bites my lower lip. Her fingers grip my shirt.
"You," she says, pulling back just far enough to speak, her eyes dark, her breathing uneven, "are a menace."
"You love it."
"That's beside the point." She glances at Owen. "Owen. I would appreciate it very much if someone would take this thing out of me. It was uncomfortable enough having it in during a professional call about illustration deadlines."
"You're lying," I know because I can see that she is aroused. My hand slides under the hem of her dress. My fingers trail up the inside of her thigh. She inhales sharply, her fingers tightening on my shirt, and when I find her she is wet, slick, the evidence of an hour's worth of slow, building arousal.
