Page 105 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

I try to sound unbothered, but I feel the ridiculous heat crawling up my neck. “You want me to take the study or the guest bedroom?”

I look at Willow. She looks right back, no sign that she wants to let this die on the vine.

“Study,” she says. “You have a better couch.”

“Do you want a timekeeper?” Julian asks with a smirk.

“We don’t need a timekeeper,” Willow shoots back. “But do whatever you want.”

I nod and pick up my drink, because my hands are incapable of playing nice with empty space. Willow stands, the movement controlled enough to pass for casual, but I catch the faintest tremor of anticipation in her.

Or maybe it’s just mine, mirrored back at me.

We walk down the hallway together, her steps in time with mine, no accidental brush of shoulders or hands.

The house feels suddenly larger and the study farther away than I remember. With every step, the silence between us grows, cultivates its own gravity, until I’m not sure if I want to arrive or turn and take refuge in the kitchen’s fluorescent safety. I stop at the study door, push it open for her.

She stands in the threshold, then crosses inside.

It’s the only room in the house that’s a proper room. Messy, functional, raw in a way the rest of the house isn’t allowed to be. I shut the door behind us and the latch clicks loudly, the sound stretching across the bookshelves and half-organized piles of notes, nervous and precise as the rest of me.

Willow stands by the window, silhouette cut against the navy dusk beyond, arms folded, but not defensively. She’s holding herself together so she doesn’t break the frame too quickly.

“Do you want to ask what I’m doing,” she says, “or should we agree we both know and avoid the embarrassment?”

The honesty stuns me, and I almost admire it.

“We’re in here for seven minutes,” I say. I’m reaching for a certain tone: joking, light, businesslike. It comes out closer to desperate restraint. “What would you like to do with the time?”

She doesn’t answer right away. The blue light off the glass paints her in grayscale and that makes me want to step closer, to touch her, to see what she’d do if I reached out and set my hand on the small of her back.

But I don’t. Not yet.

She looks over her shoulder, watches me watch her for a beat, then turns away. She paces along the edge of the rug, trailing two fingers over the tops of the books on the nearest shelf.

“When I was in high school,” she says, “seven minutes in heaven was a weird balance between fear and wanting.” She pulls a book out by the spine but doesn’t open it. “Everyone pretended the game was a joke, but nobody actually wanted to be alone with anyone they didn’t want.”

The words are a test. I know this because Willow doesn’t bother with accidents.

“So, what is it that you want?” I ask, keeping my hands at my sides.

She considers, with her back to me, and then methodically shoves the book back into place, the motion a punctuation.

“Right now?” She turns. For once, she’s not hiding behind a smokescreen of quips or careful ambiguity. Just looking at me, open enough to be terrifying. “I want to see what happens when we stop pretending this doesn’t matter.”

I realize, at last, after all the games and the sidelong studies and the impossible-to-replicate data points, that I have no plan for what happens next.

Every scenario I’ve played in my head crumbles under what’s actually in the room: the stretch of her throat, the nervous tic in her wrist, the dare in her left eyebrow. The way she’s encouraging me to do something uncharacteristic, to tip the scale from deliberation to risk.

I move closer, because it’s the only move left. The distance wasn’t meant to protect her, I realize; it was meant to save me.

I close the gap and her pupils widen, an involuntary dilation that short circuits my own resolve.

I reach for her jaw and I expect resistance, but instead she leans into the touch, her pulse hammering against my fingers where they rest just under her ear. I taste her breath before her mouth.

It’s wine and something new, maybe anticipation.

She’s not passive. She meets me halfway, arms bracketed around my back, nails scoring a warning that she isn’t coming into this quietly. The kiss starts calculated, but then it’s not.