Just the sudden, impossible question of what all right means after a morning like this.
He nods slowly, as if he has heard both the answer and the things hiding badly behind it.
“I’ll see you at the station,” he says.
“Yes.”
He leans down and kisses me again.
Not like before.
Not like the hallway, or the bed, or any of the moments my body is already threatening to replay at inconvenient intervals for the rest of my life.
This kiss is brief.
Warm.
Almost ordinary.
That is what makes it dangerous.
Then he leaves.
I listen to him move through the flat. The floorboard in the hall creaks. The front door opens. Pauses.
Closes.
The silence after is enormous.
I lie there for approximately eight seconds.
Then I sit up.
Bad idea.
My whole body offers immediate feedback.
Apparently having sex after a night shift, with a man who has opinions about pace and control, is not an activity that encourages easy movement afterwards.
I swing my legs out of bed and sit on the edge of the mattress, staring at the clothes scattered across the floor, the dent in the pillow where his head was, the duvet twisted around my hips.
My flat looks the same.
I sit there for another moment, listening to the enormous silence he has left behind, then force myself up because lying in the wreckage of my own choices is not technically a morning routine.
In the bathroom, the mirror is unkind but not unfair. My hair is a disgrace, my eyes look too dark, and there is a faint mark near my collarbone that is going to require tactical clothing and a stern conversation about impulse control.
I turn the shower on and stand under it longer than I have time for, trying not to ask what any of this means. It could mean nothing. Two adults, too much adrenaline, too little sleep, and very good sex.
A moment.
A release.
A terrible idea with good hands and green eyes. Except he leaves after one more night, and that thought cuts through the steam sharper than it should.
He goes back to Carlisle, to the newsroom and deadlines and whatever future is waiting for him.
I stay here, Watch Manager Hart, Fellside station, reports and training and call-outs and Kev’s ongoing war against basic cutlery.
