"Bene."
The line clicks dead.
I set the phone on the nightstand and swing my legs over the side of the bed. Cold wood bites into the soles of my feet, sharp enough to make my jaw tighten around Marco's voice. Through the wall, Cole's alarm goes off, the same bright guitar riff he's used since freshman year. His feet hit the floor a second later, and the alarm cuts off.
I pull on my black warmup. The tape sits on the desk where I left it last night, edges clean and ready.
Downstairs, the kitchen is dark. The espresso machine hisses when I switch it on, and steam curls into the air while it drips into the mug. I take the first swallow black, before it cools enough to be reasonable.
Cole comes down fifteen minutes later with his hair wrecked, eyes half-open, sweatpants riding low on his hips, and no shirt. He walks straight past me to reach for a mug, and his shoulder brushes my arm like he has a right to take space inside my morning.
My fingers tighten around my mug.
"Morning," he says.
"You're late."
"I'm on time." He rubs his face once with the heel of his hand. "You're early."
He pours coffee, adds sugar, then adds another spoonful. The spoon clinks against the ceramic while his gaze stays heavy-lidded, still too soft for the day. Unguarded.
This is the version of him that exists before the performance starts, before he reads the room and fills every empty corner of it. Right now, he is warm shoulder, bare skin, sugar on hisfingers, and a mouth I have no fucking business looking at this early.
Marco's voice stays lodged in my ear, telling me this needs to happen in person. The family is already reaching into my morning before the sun clears the treeline, dragging business and obligation into the only hour of the day that still feels like mine. Cole is standing beside me with his guard down in a kitchen where no one can see us, last week's darkness still caught somewhere between us. His voice sayingherlike a confession neither of us touched after.
I put the word away.
Then he moves close enough for his shoulder to brush mine again, and every locked door I have ever walked through feels too damn far away.
I set my mug down before I can talk myself out of it and step into his space.
My hand closes around the back of his neck, the place I always take hold of when I need him still, when I need him listening with more than his mouth. His hand stops halfway to his lips, coffee tilting slightly in the mug. His breath catches, and the sound goes straight through me.
I press my thumb into the tendon at the base of his neck. The muscle tightens under me.
His eyes close. His weight shifts forward until his shoulder rests lightly against my chest, and for five seconds, the kitchen narrows to his breathing and the heat of him under my hand.
I pull him closer. My mouth finds his in one hard, closed kiss that stops his whole body. For a second, he goes rigid against me, his coffee cup tilting in his hand while every muscle catches up to what just happened.
Gray morning light seeps through the window above the sink, touching the counter, the floor, the mug in his hand. Too visible. Too ordinary. Too fucking exposed.
Six years of locked doors at midnight, and I just kissed him in the kitchen at six-fifteen in the morning with gray light on his mouth and coffee cooling in his hand.
His free hand lands on my hip. His thumb hooks under the waistband of my warmups, and the rigidity breaks out of him on a low sound against my mouth.
I give it two seconds. Then I pull back and release his neck.
"Practice," I say.
He stands at the counter with his mug. His mouth is red, and his breathing has not settled. For a beat longer than usual, his gaze holds mine before he picks up the phone sitting near the sugar. One movement of his thumb locks it, and he slips it into his pocket.
"I need to get dressed," he says, still looking at me. "Unless practice is shirtless now."
"Go."
He takes his coffee upstairs. The bedroom door closes, and ten minutes of drawers and running water move through the ceiling while I rinse my mug and set it on the rack.
When he comes back down in practice gear, bag over his shoulder and hair pushed back, he stops at the kitchen threshold. His lower lip is still flushed from the kiss. His tongue touches the spot once, quick, and his eyes find mine while he does it.
