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She turned to face him in the living room. The streetlight outside cut through the window, catching the curve of her cheek, the loose strands of her hair, the faint scar above her eyebrow that he had never noticed before and would now never forget.

“You’re staring,” she said.

“I’m memorizing.”

She stepped closer. Her hands found the buttons of his shirt. She undid them one by one, slowly, the way she piped roses, like the buttons were the only thing in the room. The shirt fell open, and her hands gathered the fabric.

“Your heart,” she said.

“I know.”

“It’s still racing.”

“It’s not going to stop.”

“Good.”

She pushed the shirt off his shoulders. It dropped to the floor. Knox didn’t drop shirts on floors. He hung them on cedar hangers and aligned the buttons with the seam. But the shirt didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the woman standing close enough to touch, her hands on his skin, her eyes holding his with an openness that terrified him because he had done nothing to earn it. “Lucy.”

“Don’t.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “Just be here.”

“I don’t know how to just be here.”

“Then learn.”

She pulled her own shirt over her head. The bra beneath was plain, cotton, practical, nothing designed to seduce. And Knox had never seen anything that undid him so completely. The sight of her standing in her own living room, bare-armed and unapologetic, her skin warm in the lamplight, made his breath catch.

“You’re doing it again,” she said.

“Staring?”

“Calculating.”

“I’m not calculating.”

“Your ears are turning red. They turn red when you’re running numbers.”

“I’m not running numbers.”

“Then what are you doing?”

He stepped closer. His palm cupped her cheek. His thumb traced her cheekbone, the line of her jaw, the soft skin below her ear. She shivered.

“I’m trying to remember this,” he said. “Every part. In case I never get to see it again.”

“You’ll see it again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.” She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I know.”

He kissed her, and it was nothing like the cautious, measured kiss from the kitchen. This was his hands in her hair and her back against the wall and the sound she made when his mouth found the curve of her neck.

“Bedroom,” she said. “Now.”

He lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Her laugh was breathless and low, and he felt it in his throat, in every part of him that had been cold for years and was only now learning what warm meant.

The bedroom was small. A bed, a window, a stack of books on the nightstand. He laid her down slowly, as if she were something precious, something he hadn’t earned the right to touch.