I came under Kon’s care for protection, but no one told me it was my heart that needed the protection most of all.
Choice. That's what Persia kept circling back to. The door was never locked. She chose to stay.
Am I choosing? Or am I telling myself I'm trapped because it's easier than admitting I don't want to leave?
Kon is parked across the street, the black SUV idling, his silhouette visible through the tinted windshield.
I climb into the passenger seat and the scent of his cologne wraps around me, leather and cedar and the darker notes underneath. He glances at me, those black eyes sweeping my face, reading whatever's written there with the precision of a man trained to assess threats and vulnerabilities in a single look.
He doesn't ask. Doesn't push. Just shifts into drive and pulls into traffic.
I press my forehead against the cool window and let the question Persia planted take root in the soft soil of my chest.
Do you love him?
The Foundry smells like garlic and rosemary when we walk in. Kon moves to the kitchen without a word, rolling his sleevesto his elbows, exposing the barbed wire ink and the scarred forearms beneath. He opens the lid to a pot of stew I didn't realize he left simmering on the stove.
“The meat is tender, now it’s time for the vegetables.”
I move to my usual stool and watch him grab a knife from the magnetic bar over the stove. He moves with precision as he cuts carrots and potatoes. Onions and fresh garlic are next.
He cooks the way he does everything: with controlled violence and unexpected tenderness.
I lean against my elbows onto the counter and quietly watch him. The broad shoulders stretching his henley. The leather cord holding his dark hair at his nape, a few loose strands falling across his jaw. The quiet concentration on his face as he works the knife through an onion, his eyes barely narrowing against the sting.
He knows I'm watching. He always knows. But he doesn't turn around. Just offers the wooden spoon over his shoulder, steam curling from the broth pooled in the bowl of it.
"Taste."
I push off the stool, cross the kitchen, and close my fingers around the spoon, my hand overlapping his. The stew is rich and warm, layered with herbs and heat and the deep comfort of food made by someone who gives a damn whether you eat.
"Good?"
"Gloriously delicious."
He turns back to the stove. I watch the muscles in his back shift as he stirs, the domestic simplicity of the gesture at war with everything I know about what those hands have done.
I make a decision. It settles into my bones with a certainty that scares me and steadies me in equal measure.
"Kon."
"Mm." He doesn't turn around. Keeps stirring. The steam rises around him in lazy curls.
"I want to stay tonight." My voice is steady even though my heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my fingertips. "Not because of the contract. Not because of secrets or deals or anything I owe you." I swallow, my throat clicking. "Just because I want to." I need him to know I am choosing this willingly now.
His hand stills on the spoon. The stirring stops. The kitchen goes quiet except for the low simmer of the stew and the distant hum of the city beyond the windows.
He turns to face me. Those black eyes search mine, moving between them, reading layers I didn't know I was showing. His expression is guarded, the strong jaw tight, the scar through his eyebrow pulled taut. But underneath the control, I catch the subtle flare of his nostrils, the barely perceptible widening of his pupils, the way his chest expands on a breath he holds a beat too long.
He understands.
"You are sure?" The words come out careful, low, his accent thickening around the vowels the way it does when he's holding back a flood of emotions. He might have learned a lot about me in our time together, but that flood gate has gone both ways.
"I'm sure. I want you. No deal. No transaction. Just..." I gesture between us, a helpless motion that encompasses the kitchen and the coffee and the stew and the two weeks of fighting and fucking and falling that have led me to this exact moment. "This."
He sets the spoon down. Crosses the kitchen in three strides, each footfall deliberate, measured, the controlled approach of a man who doesn't trust himself to rush. He stops in front of me and cups my face in both hands, his calloused palms warm against my cheeks, his thumbs tracing the line of my cheekbones.
He doesn't kiss me. Not yet. He just holds my face and looks at me with an expression that cracks open the last fortified corner of my chest.
