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What woke me this morning was weight.

It lay across my chest, warm and solid, rising and falling in a rhythm that was not my own. Her head was tucked beneath my chin. My arm was around her. Her bound wrists rested against my breastbone, and her knees had found my shin. Somewhere in the night, without any permission from me, I had rolled around her like a wall.

I did not hold people. I did not even hold my own pillow.

I should have moved. Instead I lay still and took inventory, the way I always did, only this time it was not exits. The heat of her through thin cotton. The slow knock of her heart. The curve of her spine fitted against my forearm. The small, cold bones of her feet against my ankle. Her breath, warm and damp, stirring the hair on my chest.

I rested my cheek on the top of her head. Her hair was soft, far softer than I had expected, springy and downy against my jaw. A truck groaned along the frontage road. A bird argued with itself outside. For a few breaths, nothing in the world was trying to kill me.

Then my body, never one to take instruction from my conscience, woke up alongside the rest of me.

Only one part of me had risen with the sun, and it had no sense of occasion. I swallowed a groan.

Very slowly, I edged away. Defusing a bomb would have been easier. She murmured a ghost of a word and burrowed her nose into the warm hollow I had left, and my heart stalled.

She did not wake.

I sat on the edge of the bed until my breathing evened out. Then I looked back at the rope curled around her wrists, pale against her skin, and checked each loop with two fingers.

My thumb lingered on the knot, then drifted to the bare skin just above it.

It was a mistake. I let it stay a moment longer, feeling her pulse beat against my thumb, quick and alive.

Chapter 17

Zuri

We were on the last leg of our journey, but something was wrong. It had been since Mississippi. I had fallen asleep with my fingers curled around his hand and woken to an empty bed, and since then his silence was colder and his touch non-existent. Tau carried too much, and I feared I was locked out. We had put a great distance between us and the cartel. It didn’t stop Tau from being cautious.

My jaw almost hit the seat when I saw him pay by card, but nothing was simple with this man. He flicked through about five or six cards before he paid for the gas.

He climbed into the car again, and I decided that enough was enough. While he was busy clipping in his seatbelt, I placed my hand on his leg. I hadn’t planned it. My hand moved first. The muscle tensed beneath my palm and I felt his eyes on me.

I held steady and stared straight ahead at the tired-looking car wash. My heart was pounding.

Neither of us spoke.

He started the engine.

I closed my eyes as we began to move again. Cabin fever was real.

The sedan picked up speed as we merged onto the highway. That was when I heard him sigh and, one second later, felt the warmth of his hand cover mine.

One tight squeeze, and he released his grip, but he left my hand where it was. My throat tightened.

For a man like Tau, this was probably a sixth-date move. Allow the woman one touch.

Sheesh. He was a reverse Adrián.

I almost snorted. Instead, I kept my eyes closed and wondered what everyone was doing at home. Whether Auntie still set a place for me at the table. Whether Imani had wiped my name off the whiteboard or left it there.

Just as I was drifting off, his fingers slid between mine, slowly, as if giving me time to pull away. I didn't. The weight of his palm settled over my knuckles.

We all needed human connection, some more than others.

❦ ❦ ❦

My nose was practically pressed against the window as I stared into the streets of New York. I could feel the buzz of its people inside the car. It was nighttime and it did not matter. The city was still alive. I moved back to stare at the tall buildings, the dazzling lights that had me clawing Tau’s thigh.