“Of course,” she said.
“This way.”
I touched her elbow. Just the elbow. Just for the second it took to turn her toward the far side of the room. Then I let go.
She walked beside me. We crossed the reception space without speaking. We passed the head of engineering, who lifted her glass to me without comment. We passed two more partners I’d been meaning to talk to all night and would now not be talking to. We passed the open doorway to the small terrace off the main reception room, and I steered her toward it without saying anything, and she went.
The terrace was empty.
The evening was warm and thick. The city below was busy as usual—taillights moving along the avenues, the river catching whatever light was left in the sky, the hum of a Wednesday night at nine o’clock. We were thirty floors up in a venue Myrror rented for these things—a rooftop event space on the west side with too much glass and not enough privacy. The receptionwas behind us through a set of French doors that closed slowly enough I had to wait for them to click shut before I turned to her.
She was already looking at me.
She’d set her wineglass on the wide stone ledge that ran along the terrace railing. Her hand was flat on the ledge next to it. Her chin was tilted up the half inch it always tilted when she was waiting for me to do or say something specific.
“There’s no one I need you to meet,” I said.
“I know.”
That was all she said.I know. Two words. The same two words she’d said on the rooftop on Friday night. The same two words she’d said in her hallway on Monday outside her door. She had a way of sayingI knowthat ended conversations and started other ones.
I closed the distance between us. Not all the way. Two feet, then one.
“That man was making you uncomfortable,” I said.
“He was.”
“I handled it.”
“I was about to handle it more.” Her chin tipped up another fraction. “You got to him first.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
The question landed in the space between us and sat there. I could’ve answered it three different ways. I could’ve said because he was standing too close. I could’ve said because I don’t share. I could’ve said something measured and CEO-shaped about the company’s responsibility to junior staff at events like this.
I didn’t say any of those things.
“Because I told you on Monday I wouldn’t stop at a kiss,” I said.
Her breath caught.
I watched her register it. The small intake. The flicker at her throat. The way her hand on the stone ledge curled into a slight fist and then flattened again.
“Sutton.”
“Tell me to stop.”
“What?”
“Tell me to stop. I’ll stop.”
She didn’t tell me to stop.
I lifted my hand to her jaw the way I’d lifted it Monday night. Thumb against her cheekbone. Fingers along the line of her throat. She’d been waiting for me to do it—I could see it in her eyes, in the way her chin came up to meet my hand—and this time, I didn’t pull back.
I kissed her.
