There was an ease in the conversation that shouldn’t have existed. Every time I tried to feel out the edges of it, I found only more comfort, like the world had re-calibrated itself to make space for the three of us: me, Grace, and the man whose kitchen looked like it had never seen a real breakfast before today.
We volleyed like that for ten minutes—me sniping, him fielding every jab with a neutral face and the occasional dry return.
I was starting to think I could get used to it.
He waited until I was halfway through my second cup, then set his mug down, both hands cupped around the rim. “I want you to stay,” he said.
I froze, toast suspended halfway to my mouth. “Come again?”
He didn’t blink. “Not one night. Not a week. I want you here, indefinitely.”
I set the toast down, wiped my hands on a napkin I’d only just realized was linen, and looked him straight in the eye. “You’re aware of how sentences work, right? The kind where you leave room for the other person’s opinion?”
He considered. “I’m aware. I said it anyway.”
I barked a laugh. “You just going to annex my freedom by force?”
He shook his head. “You’re free to go, but I find the alternative—your scent in the walls here—vastly preferable to it anywhere else. Especially above a bakery with compromised security and known threats.”
It took a second to process the phrase your scent in the walls. “That’s the single least romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”
“No shit.”
Grace chose that moment to emit a soft, satisfied grunt, followed by a snore. The bouncer’s springs sang a lullaby in off-key metallic.
I tried to come up with a comeback, but found nothing. Instead, I just wrapped my hands around the coffee mug and let the heat bite. My jaw flexed, and I knew he saw it.
Braham said, “I don’t do well with pretense. I’d rather be honest than smooth.”
That landed. Harder than I wanted it to.
The kitchen went silent, except for the pulse of traffic below and the distant hum of the city waking up.
I watched the coffee swirl in my mug, then looked up at him, ready to lob another grenade. But the words just didn’t come. Instead, there were three feet of marble between us, a newborn asleep in a $200 bouncer, and the sense that everything else could wait.
I held his gaze, didn’t smile, didn’t flinch. “You know you’re going to lose this argument, right?” I asked, finally.
He smiled, slow, like the last move in a chess game. “Not today.”
We stayed like that, holding the silence, both of us refusing to look away. The memory of last night’s kiss lingered like an afterimage, sweet and dangerous, but neither of us named it.
After a minute, he pushed the bouncer with one finger, rocking Grace back into a deeper sleep. He asked, “You want more coffee?”
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
I meant it.
I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. I let the coffee do its work and watched the morning light crawl across the kitchen, orange and blue and not at all subtle. Eventually, I said, “I need to get my laptop.”
Braham waited, stillness personified.
“I have a manuscript due in six weeks,” I clarified. “My editor is the kind of person who has entire folders labeled ‘revenge.’ I miss a deadline, and she’ll make me look like an instructional video on how not to write a sentence.”
He inclined his head, fractionally. “I’ll have Ashe retrieve it.”
“No.” I set the mug down, spine straightening in a way that suggested we were back to pre-dawn stand-offs. “I’ll get it myself. And I’ll bring back my good coffee, and my switchblades, and the sweater I left on the fire escape last month.”
