“This really is stunning,” I said. “I’ve never seen it up here at night. It’s a whole different building.”
He came up behind me, put his arms around me, his chin settling on my shoulder, both of us looking out at the spread of light. I leaned back into him. “You can see the whole city from up here,” I said.
“Most of it.” He lifted a hand past my shoulder and pointed past the bright part of downtown to a darker block where the buildings went smaller. “You see that corner. The little building with the blue awning?”
I followed his finger to see a barely lit building, a single sign I couldn’t read from here.
“That was my great-uncle Marvin’s record shop,” he said. “Long before any of this. My parents grew up in that place. Met there as kids, nine, ten years old. Used to ride their bikes together to it every day after school, back when half these roads were still dirt. They’d spend whole afternoons in there playing records, arguing about which song was better.”
“Their story sounds beautiful, Julian.”
“It was. She worked at that shop for a while after high school, while Pops went on the road. His career just taking off.”
I stayed very still. I knew his mother was gone. I knew his father was out there somewhere, a fact that hung over the whole family but no one really talked about. I’d gathered the rest in pieces over time, from Simone, from things Julian didn’t quite finish saying. But I had never once heard him just offer it up, unprompted.
“He came back for her,” Julian said. “He came home, got her, and took her back on the road with him, and that was that. Everything started on that corner.” He paused. “I chose this view because of that. On a bad day I can look down there and remember it started in a room the size of the bathroom in here.”
The light from the window caught the side of his face. “I just wishshe could’ve seen what it turned into,” he said, and the steadiness in his voice gave, barely.
I turned in his arms so I could see him. “She would be so proud of you, Julian.Beyondproud. Not just of the business, but of who you are. I know if Micah grows up to be half the man you are, I would be so proud. I’d know I’d done something right.”
He didn’t reply to that, but whatever was on my face made something in him shift. The corner of his mouth turned up. He'd given me something real, and now he was done being looked at that closely.
“You ready to go? It’s late.”
“I know it’s late. I toldyouthat.”
He’d opened up to me, and I knew better than to reach for more. So I lightened the moment. I looked back out at the city.
“You ever bring a woman up here?” I asked. “To see all this.”
“No. You’re the first.”
I leaned back against the cool of the glass, the whole lit city dropping away behind me, and let a slow smile go. “So you’re telling me you’ve never broken in this office? All this beautiful space. All this privacy.” I tilted my head. “That’s a shame, Julian.”
He moved closer, crowding me against the window until my back was flush against the glass. “Is that what this is?” A hungry look came over his face, his voice dropping an octave. “You want to break it in?” His hands came to rest on my hips, fingers digging in.
“I-I was joking,” I half laughed without much conviction.
“No you weren’t.” His grip got tighter. “And we're not leaving here until we've properly christened every surface.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Julian, someone might see.”
He let out a predatory laugh. “We’re thirty floors up. It’s midnight.” His mouth found the side of my throat and his hands slid up under my shirt. “And if there’s anybody out there with a telescope and that much patience… let them have the show.”
Before I could say anything else his mouth was on mine, and whatever I'd been pretending to protest went out of me. I came up onto my toes and held on to his shoulders and let him have it.
He pulled my top up and I raised my arms and let him take it off me, and the cool of the room moved over my skin a second before his mouth came back to mine, one hand spreading warmth over the lace of my bra.
“You wear too many clothes,” he said against my mouth.
“So do you.” I went for the buttons on his shirt and I felt his fingersat the clasp of my bra. It fell to the floor, my breasts spilling into his hands, thumbs circling my nipples until I was arching, moans escaping my throat.
He knelt down and pulled my pants and underwear off, and by the time he stepped back to look at me, I had nothing on but the city behind me.
He unbuckled his pants, let them drop and kicked them away, then freed himself from his boxers. He lifted my leg over his arm, pressed me back into the window and pushed inside me. The cold against my spine and the heat of him everywhere else was a sensation I felt all the way down. I held on to whatever I could reach, with the city blurred in the corner of my eye.
“You like the view?” he murmured against my ear, and before I could answer, he pulled out, and turned me around to face the glass. My nipples hardened against the cold glass. The city lights strung out in their grids, headlights threading the dark, the whole downtown right there, close enough to touch and miles away.
