"I know that."
"Do you? Because you keep making decisions for me like I can't make them myself. You said no because you decided I wasn't ready. You cloned my phone because you decided I needed monitoring. You built a cover story and a timeline and a staggered return and you didn't ask me about any of it—you just did it. Because apparently, you know best."
My jaw tightens. Every word landing because every word is accurate.
"You're right."
"I know I'm right." He's not angry. That's the part that gets me. His voice is even. Calm. "I'm not saying it wasn't necessary. The cover story, the hotel, Margot—you did what you had to do. But at some point, you have to let me be a person in this. Not a problem you're solving."
"You were never a problem."
"Atlas." Gentle. Almost amused. "I've been a problem since I walked through the front door of this house. For you, for them too."
I look at him. At the dark eyes and the messed hair and the bare feet. He’s telling the truth and this is, perhaps, the mostopen he’s ever been. He doesn’t say it like a burden he’s carrying, just straight fact.
And he’s correct.
He walked through that door and I swear my entire life rearranged around him.
"You're right," I say again. And this time the words carry something heavier—an admission, a surrender. "I don't know how to do this without controlling it. I don't know how to want someone without building a cage around them and calling it safety. That's—" I press my palms flat on the counter. "That's the only version of love I know."
Max is quiet for a moment. Then he looks at me—not with pity, not with judgment, just those dark eyes steady and warm over the rim of his coffee cup—and says, "For what it's worth, your version of love feels pretty good from my side of it."
Something inside me dissolves. Like a wall I've been reinforcing for months turning to sand and sliding through my fingers. And every defense I have left—every reason, every calculation, every carefully constructed argument for why I should keep my hands to myself and my distance intact—just...goes.
I want to taste the skin at the hollow of his throat. Want to press my mouth against his pulse and feel it hammer. Want to know if his lips are as soft as they look in this light, if the sound he'd make would be the same one I've been hearing in my head since the kitchen, if—
I can't do this from a stool. Can't sit next to him like we're having a conversation about the weather when every cell in my body is pulling toward him like gravity rearranged itself around a twenty-year-old with messy hair and bare feet.
I stand up.
The stool scrapes against the marble. Max blinks—startled, maybe thinking I'm leaving, maybe thinking theconversation went too far and I’m pulling away again. His mouth opens to say something.
I don't let him.
My hands find his knees and I turn him on the stool—one smooth motion, the seat swiveling until he's facing me, his legs falling open. He leans back against the counter, palms flat on the marble behind him, and the position puts his face level with my chest, his chin tilting up, those dark eyes finding mine in the low amber light.
I step between his legs. Close enough that his knees bracket my hips. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through the thin sweatpants, through the space between us that isn't really space anymore. My hands find his hips—grip, drag him forward on the stool until there's nothing left between us but fabric and the last fraying thread of my self-control.
His breath catches. His palms press harder against the counter behind him. But he doesn't pull away. Doesn't flinch. Just looks up at me with the same expression he had the first time—the trust, the want, the please that doesn't need to be spoken.
My hand finds his jaw. Tips his face up further. The pads of my fingers against his skin. The pulse in his throat beating fast under my thumb.
"If I kiss you," I say, "I'm not going to stop."
"I know."
"I've been saying no for months."
"I know that too."
"I can't keep saying no to you." The words come out wrecked. "I've tried. I havetried, Max. And I can't."
His hand finds my wrist where I'm holding his face. His fingers wrap around it. Not pulling. Holding. Anchoring me to something real.
"Then don't."
I kiss him.
