Her shoulders ease a fraction. She shakes her head and goes back to her pasta, but the corner of her mouth curves.
"The piece Addison referenced in film today," Dante says, turning to Maya. "Your forechecking analysis. The pressure metrics were strong."
Maya lifts her eyes from her pasta. She looks at Dante. He looks back. The first time they've made direct eye contact since she walked through the door.
"Thank you," she says.
"Most journalists don't sit in the press box for four years building a data set like that."
"That sounds dangerously close to a compliment, Voss."
"It's an observation."
"Your observations come with a lot of qualifiers. You can just say it was good work."
"It was competent work."
"Competent." Her mouth curves. "Last week it was wrong. Now it's competent. At this rate I'll reach adequate by May."
"I set standards."
"You set traps. You frame every compliment as a concession so you never have to admit you're impressed."
"I'm impressed."
Maya's fork pauses halfway to her mouth. Dante's jaw hardens.
"Well," Maya says, quieter now. "That's new."
I watch both of them.
The flush climbing Maya's neck. Dante's hand tightening around his water glass. The way neither of them looks away fast enough.
My fingers curl against my thigh.
Then heat drops low, dirty and wrong enough that I should look away and don't.
Maya's chin lifts the way it does when she's about to win an argument. Dante's jaw goes rigid the way it does when control starts slipping out of his hands. They are sparring across my kitchen table, and my pulse kicks before I can put a name to it.
Dante's fork hits the side of his bowl. The sound is small, sharp. Maya's whole body goes still for a fraction of a second. Her fingers tighten on the stem of her glass. Dante's hand slows. He sets the fork down gently. Deliberately.
Maya's jaw tightens. She picks up her wine.
I reach under the counter and put my hand on her knee.
Same hand. Same knee. The gesture I've been making since we were kids.
Yesterday, this was only a way I knew how to steady her.
Dante's body was on hers. These legs wrapped around him. This skin was under his hands.
The thought makes my fingers tighten before I can stop them.
She feels the difference. Her eyes flick to mine for a half-second, reading. Then her thigh releases under my palm. She takes a breath. My hand stays where it is. Dante can't see it from his side of the counter, but Maya's posture changes. She softens a fraction. Leans a half-inch toward me.
Dante sees the lean. His eyes track from Maya's face to her shoulder to the angle of her body tilting toward me. His jaw shifts. His water glass rotates once in his fingers.
I eat my pasta with my hand still under the table, touching one of them while the other watches me do it.
