Chapter Text
Samira was just about ready to wring the neck of one Mr. Jack Abbot. Bodyguard extraordinaire. Best kisser of her fucking life. Which was terrible news, because he seemed determined never to repeat the experience. And while she was at it, she was going to wring Dennis’s neck too. Because they really were not so essential to Robby’s life that he had needed to hunt them both down and drag them back inside for the cake cutting.
She cringed every time she remembered it, which was often over the course of the past two weeks.
Dennis slamming the door open, making far more noise than a man of his height and general agility had any right to. Jack tearing himself away from her like he’d been caught not kissing her, but crouched over her corpse, sticky warm blood dripping from his hands, rushing in pink little rivulets across the concrete with the rain. A little water clears us of this deed. Dennis laughing in delighted obliviousness, safely inside and sheltered from the pouring rain.
“Hey, lovebirds! Try not to set the rain on fire. And if you’re willing to pause that for maybe five minutes, we’re cutting the cake!”
Dennis had vanished back inside. Jack had stayed. Not for long though.
He’d stared down at her, still close enough to steal her breath, eyes burning—devouring her—while his expression went utterly blank.
She stared right back.
He was soaked through. His hair lay plastered to his head, rain-dark curls flattened and dripping. His black T-shirt—he’d apparently forgotten his jacket—clung to him, half transparent. His lips were swollen and red, his eyes bright to the point of mania. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze—those are pearls that were his eyes—so she followed the path of the rain instead: down his curls, along his temple, over the sharp line of his jaw, down the column of his neck, disappearing into his shirt.
“I’m so sorry, Mohan.”
Raw and ravaged and broken. Before she could even process the words, he stepped back. The sudden loss of his heat—combined with the relentless rain—had her trembling like a stray puppy.
Then he turned away and strode back inside.
They sang happy birthday and pasted smiles on their faces. Robby—surrounded by everyone he loved and then some—grinned ear to ear, eyes alight with joy. Dennis fed him cake, then chased the sweetness with a kiss to whistles and cheers, before being shooed aside so Samira could cut slices for everyone else.
Not long after, they drove home.
Soaked to the bone.
And in agonising silence.
The rain followed them into the car.
Not in sound—he shut the door on the downpour with controlled finality—but in wetness on his skin, the sharp memory of the not so distant kiss, and that strangely aching scent that he would probably associate with the softness of Samira’s lips and the wet heat of her mouth for the rest of his life. Petrichor clung stubbornly to his clothes, sharp and clean and literally electric. Rain on dry earth. A smell that usually meant relief from thirst and drought.
The car sealed itself with a dull, airtight thump, and the atmosphere shifted almost immediately. Cool dampness gave way to something heavy and enclosed, heat blooming fast beneath glass and upholstery. Humidity pressed in. His soaked T-shirt clung uncomfortably to his back, jeans damp at the thighs, the prosthetic socket tight where water had crept in. He welcomed the irritation. The physical discomfort was manageable and it kept him present but distracted enough.
He waited for her to click her seatbelt into the socket before he pulled away from the curb without uttering a word. Hands at ten and two. Grip tightening until his knuckles bleached pale. Everything about his posture locked down: rigid and contained, almost defensive. The soldier shell slid back into place with practiced ease. If he stayed controlled enough, distant enough, he could keep her safe from him.
The scent changed as the car warmed.
Samira’s perfume emerged as the rain smell faded—sweet, familiar jasmine, now trapped in the humid air. It filled the enclosed space with quiet insistence, settling into his lungs like something alive. Jack’s chest tightened and twisted until he had to fight the urge to rub his fist against his sternum. He stared straight ahead, eyes fixed on the road as if attention alone could burn the feeling away.
Silence stretched and grew thick. Heavy and unbearable. Not unlike wet clothes on bare skin once you’d gotten out of the rain.
Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he flicked the radio on: an instinctive, graceless attempt to fill the weight of the empty silence before it crushed him.
My eyes grew heavy and my lips they could not speak…
The song bloomed into the car. His entire body reacted before his mind caught up. Shoulders stiffened. Jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked painfully at his temple.
Summer Wine.
The memory hit him with brutal clarity, like the universe was conspiring against him with the song that happened to be playing.
Another drive. Another night. Samira in this same passenger seat—looser then, wine-warm and unguarded. She’d queued the song up herself, grinning in unbridled delight like she knew exactly what she was doing, one leg tucked beneath her as she sang along badly and proudly. The air had been light then, laughter easy, her presence something warm instead of devastating. The moon had followed them home that night too, but the air had been much cooler, and strangely he thought they might have been closer then too, despite the typical advantage of time. He remembered thinking—dangerously—how right it had felt.
Now the lyrics unfolded differently, each line cutting deeper than the last. A ruinous kiss. Sweet and intoxicating.
God, Samira had tasted like spit and rain and sweet summer wine. A taste that lingered long after the damage was done.
Too fitting. He ran his tongue along the top row of his teeth, like he could savour the taste of it, her, still. He thought of a few weeks back when Samira had made them watch Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet during one of their post family dinner movie nights. Juliet desperately licking into Romeo’s mouth, trying to draw into herself any remnants of poison.
Too cruel. Haply some poison yet doth hang on them.
The song went on, lush and unrepentant, low and crooning and sultry and aching. And he stayed rigid behind the wheel, eyes forward, expression blanked into something hard and disciplined. He did not look at her. He did not reach for the radio again, desperate to not give himself away, and perhaps maybe, still slightly more concerned about the weight of silence between them instead.
Beside him, he felt her shift.
She turned the radio off with a sharp, decisive flick. The silence that followed was immediate and brutal, swallowing the last note whole. It pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating, and she leaned into it with grim resolve.
She hadn’t imagined it.
The instant the song started, he’d gone rigid. Shoulders locking, jaw tightening, his face flickering—just for a split second—with something raw before the mask slammed back into place. And then the lyrics. God, the lyrics. She watched them land on him like blows, saw the way his expression hardened as the song told its story far too accurately.
Maybe he remembered too. The thought hurt more than she’d expected.
Because she remembered too well. That other drive. Her parents’ house glowing behind them, her wine-drunk courage, the ease of it all. How she’d played the song herself, teasing, warm, already half-tipsy on wine and the intoxication of Jack’s closeness all through that night. How different it had felt then. How safe.
Now he sat beside her like a man enduring penance.
Regret, her mind supplied instantly and viciously. Regret so sharp it made him flinch at the reminder. Disgust so deep he couldn’t even pretend otherwise.
I’m so sorry, Mohan.
The words echoed again, ugly and humiliating. Not this is complicated. Not I shouldn’t have. Just sorry—as if she were the error. As if kissing her had been something that required fucking absolution.
Her fingers curled slowly into fists in her lap.
Fine.
If he wanted to pretend nothing had happened—if he wanted silence and distance and rigid professionalism—then she would give him exactly that. And then she would push. She would test. She would lean just far enough into his space to force a reaction, one way or another.
She stared out the window, posture immaculate, face pale and set like stone.
The car rolled on through the wet night, humid and claustrophobic and electric with everything neither of them was saying.
The silence did not end when the car stopped. It followed them into the building, into the lift, into the apartment, stretching itself like an unwelcome weighted blanket, hot and heavy and stifling across every shared space.
The silence set in like weather. Another storm, but this one refused to break. A slow, suffocating pressure system that rolled in and refused to move. It filled the apartment inch by inch, coating every surface, seeping into the walls. By the second day, Samira could feel it when she woke up, thick in her chest and sitting heavy behind her eyes.
Jack had gone cold.
He moved through the apartment like a shadow with sharp edges; precise, efficient, and utterly bloodless. Every interaction was stripped down to function. Good morning. I’ll be in the other room. Let me know when you’re leaving. No warmth, no friction, no inflection that suggested he was anything other than a man executing a task. She’d seen him look more fondly at dogs trotting past on the street.
It was worse than before the kiss.
Before, there had been tension. Banter edged sharp with awareness. A current she could push against, provoke, enjoy. Now there was nothing to grab onto. Just smooth, professional detachment.
She felt him everywhere anyway.
In the kitchen, when she reached for the kettle and his hand was already there—close enough that she felt heat, then gone before contact. In the hallway, when she passed him and the air sparked like static along her skin. In the living room, when she curled on the sofa and felt his attention settle on her like a weight, impersonal and relentless.
He never looked at her directly for long.
That was the worst part.
He tracked her constantly—she knew that much—but his gaze slid away the instant she tried to catch it. As if eye contact itself were a line he refused to cross. As if she were radioactive.
Samira knew she wasn’t a bad kisser. Regret, her mind supplied, again and again. He regretted it. The kiss. Her. The whole humiliating mess.
And he was waiting.
Waiting for what, she wasn’t sure. Permission to pretend it never happened? Acknowledgement that it was a mistake. Confirmation that she understood the redrawn rules? The waiting itself felt like an accusation. Like proof that she had imagined the intimacy entirely on her own.
By the end of the week, the hurt had sharpened into something angular and bright.
She was pacing the living room when her phone rang.
Ma.
She answered, already resketching herself into something composed through the false steadiness and cheer in her voice.
Jack was nearby—standing by the window, ostensibly watching the street below. The late afternoon light caught in the glass and outlined him in pale gold, turning him into a silhouette of straight lines and restraint. Abstinent abbot and his church windows and god gifted light.
“Hi, Ma. How goes? All good or calling for gup-shup?”
Her mother’s voice filled her ears, warm and familiar. Samira sank onto the arm of the sofa, tucking one leg beneath her, fingers worrying lightly at the hem of her linen shirt.
They talked logistics at first: the summer gala she’d mentioned that first dinner she’d brought Jack too. The invitation she’d agreed to take in their stead. Samira pitched enthusiasm just high enough to be convincing.
“I’ve got you covered, ma,” she grinned. “I can’t promise I’ll behave, but I’ll be there.”
Divya laughed. “Oh well, this family’s been needing their politician scandal. And you’d be surprised with the nakhre beautiful women can get away with.”
Samira giggled then, feeling lighter than she had in days, “Well, ma, in that case I’m going to have to buy a truly scandalous dress.”
They snickered together, Divya suggesting that Samira charge the dress to her father’s card. Then, casual, just checking in as Divya Mohan always did, “How is Jack doing, baba? Is he settled in okay? I hope you’re not giving the poor fellow too much trouble?”
Samira lifted her gaze. Jack was still facing the window. Still perfectly composed.
Something hot and reckless twisted in her chest. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.
“Oh, Jack?” she said lightly, pitching her voice into practiced ease. “He’s great, Mum. Doing an excellent job.”
She watched his shoulders stiffen—just a fraction.
“You were so right, it really is so reassuring having him around,” she continued, her tone smooth, almost bored. “I feel completely safe.”
The words tasted sharp.
“And he’s the consummate professional.”
She meant it to sting. Meant it to force something—anger, denial, anything. If he was going to pretend the kiss hadn’t happened, she would hand him the lie wrapped neatly in a bow. Poke and prod and instigate until he seemed as unstable and off-kilter and furious as she suddenly felt.
Divya sounded pleased. Relieved. “That’s wonderful. We could tell he’s a good man, and it’s so lovely you’ve become friends. We’re both so happy you have him.”
“Yes,” Samira said softly, ignoring the open, vulnerable honesty gilding her voice. “Me too.”
She ended the call a minute later and stood without ceremony. She didn’t give Jack the satisfaction of a glance as she walked past him down the hallway, closing her bedroom door with careful quiet.
If that was the box he wanted to stay in, she would seal it shut herself.
Jack had spent the week waiting.
He hadn’t admitted it to himself at first—he was too disciplined for that—but the truth settled in his bones all the same. He waited for a look held a second too long. A question asked sideways. A tone shift that suggested permission.
Anything.
He replayed the night in the rain over and over, searching for evidence he hadn’t imagined her kissing her back. Fingers twining in his shirt and tugging in his hair. Teeth nipping at his lips, tongue hungrily licking into his mouth. Her pulling him closer even as he pressed in himself. And as he searched, he stayed rigid and distant because it was safer. Because if he stayed contained enough, he could keep her safe from him.
She gave him nothing.
She was polite. Controlled. Cool in a way that told him she was already past it. Already done.
Still, he waited.
When the tinny sound her mother’s voice came through the tiny speakers of her phone, he braced automatically. Family meant scrutiny in concurrence with a great many deceptions at the moment. He remained where he was, posture neutral, attention split between the street and the cadence of the conversation.
Then his name.
“Oh, Jack?”
His pulse jumped and he found himself listening with the same alert focus he had every time he stepped out of the doors of this apartment with Samira by his side.
Great.
Excellent job.
A kid accidentally dropped her ice-cream all over the pavement and burst into tears as her poor father found himself both, wrangling the suddenly thrilled dog who couldn’t fathom why he was being dragged away from the treat on the floor, and the devastated child who had squeezed her eyes shut and was visibly wailing with all the force in her lungs.
So reassuring.
Completely safe.
His throat tightened. A young woman walked towards the door juggling what was genuinely an armful of sweet treats, a bottle of wine tucked under one of those arms, and a phone wedged to her ear with her shoulder into which she was expressively speaking a mile a minute. She looked pissed, not actively so, but in the way his sisters and Samira both looked when they were recounting a story in which someone or something had pissed them off.
The consummate professional.
Suddenly his vision blacked and he couldn’t see anything.
There it was. The cue he’d been waiting for. Not forgiveness—dismissal. She was drawing the boundary herself, cool and unbothered, telling her mother—and him—that nothing was between them. He felt, terrifyingly, hollowed out.
It confirmed everything he feared. He’d misread her. Overstepped. Projected something that had never existed. And now she was setting things quite clear.
He turned back to the window before she could see the effect it had on him. The city swam slightly, lights blurring in the glass. He locked his hands behind his back to steady them.
When the call ended, he did not turn around.
He heard her pass him. Heard the soft close of her bedroom door.
That was it, then.
The line had been drawn, and she had done it for both of them.
Jack stayed where he was long after, breathing shallowly, holding himself rigid and contained, resolved—grimly—to be exactly what she had just told the world he was.
The consummate professional.
Nothing more.
The boutique was clearly all about money and high-class fashion: cool AC air, plush cream carpet, the faint ghost of expensive but tastefully applied perfume worn by women who didn't feel the need to announce their presence via scent. Samira had initially insisted on thrifting but they had two days left and, much to her disappointment, she’d found nothing. Jack trailed a few steps behind while Samira moved through the floor with the unhurried ease of someone entirely at home, trailing fingertips along silk and structured boning as she went. He catalogued exits, noted the position of the single other customer, tracked the elegant older saleswoman moving toward them with the practiced glide of someone who had sold very expensive things to very composed people for a long time.
He kept his eyes moving. Professional and methodical.
Don't look at her hands.
Samira’s hands were a constant, quiet distraction, entirely out of place in the sterile calculus of his threat assessments.
They were hands that didn't belong to the fragile, porcelain world she currently glided through. Her fingers were long and elegant, yes, but there was a grounded strength in them—the slight calluses on her palms from things she actually worked at, the neat, unvarnished nails that indicated at the medical degree that refused the high-maintenance upkeep of the class around her. Right now, those hands were a study in contrast, the warm, sun-deepened skin of her knuckles brushing against a sleeve of cream-coloured silk.
When she touched the fabric, her fingers moved with a deliberate, appreciative pressure, feeling the weight and weave instead of just skimming the surface. She was so deeply knowledgeable on such a vast array of things: she knew her fabrics, dragging him to buy linens when the weather got warm because it was more breathable, discussing different materials with her mother over the phone as she thrifted, clearly sifting through the dresses she looked through now basis that knowledge. He knew the exact warmth of those hands from the brief, necessary moments of guiding her through crowds, and he knew the surprising, steady grip they possessed.
Watching her thumb mindlessly trace the edge of a silver cuff bracelet, Jack forced his gaze back to the store’s blind spots. Keeping her safe was hard enough without acknowledging how easily those same hands could dismantle his professionalism.
"I'm thinking something in red," Samira said, not to him, ostensibly to the saleswoman—whose name, he gathered in the next ninety seconds, was Marguerite—but with the precise, carrying projection of someone who knew she had an audience of exactly one. "Or perhaps not. I’m not opposed to a classic black, or maybe a dark purple? Jack, what do you think?"
He affected boredom, looking her in the eyes like it didn’t make him feel absolutely torn wide open for her visual consumption. "I don't have a preference."
"Helpful as always."
“What half-decent man tells a woman what to wear?”
Marguerite smiled between them with the serene confidence of a woman who had seen every variation of this particular dynamic before. "I'll pull a few options," she said warmly, and floated toward the back.
He took his position near the entrance to the private fitting area—close enough to respond, far enough to constitute a perimeter. Samira disappeared inside. The curtain fell.
He waited.
She came out and turned, slow and unbothered, facing him with her arms slightly raised, chin tilted. The first dress was black. Backless—almost entirely, the fabric gathered just above the base of her spine—silk clinging to every dip and curve that felt almost scandalous even as the design remained incredibly modest at the front. He swallowed, hearing his dry mouth click as he did so.
"The back," she said. "Is it too much for a formal function?"
He let his gaze move across her with the flat, assessing efficiency of a man reading a tactical brief. The line of her shoulder blades. The curve of her waist. The nape of her neck where the fabric gathered and then simply stopped.
"It’s very elegant and tastefully designed," he tried, trying to regurgitate the shit he’d grown up hearing his mother and sister’s say when he’d been dragged along dress shopping. "The colour is great against your skin. Makes it lustrous."
A pause. One corner of her mouth curved.
"Right," she said, and disappeared back inside.
The second was ivory, draped, with a slit that began at the hip. She walked the length of the room in it, heel striking softly against the carpet, and then turned. She cocked a hip and the fabric whispered against her skin as it fell away, exposing the long, muscled length of brown skin from upper thigh—almost hip, really—to floor.
"Too bridal?"
"No."
"Not too much leg? I’m worried with the slit so high I might accidentally flash som—"
"No."
She tilted her head at him. A challenge sat in her eyes, bright and patient. Waiting for the crack.
He didn't give her one.
The third was a dark, saturated blood-red—silk that moved like it was alive and intent on highlighting all of Samira in a way that felt almost cruel. It wasn't just beautiful; it was architectural sorcery. The halter bodice was structured into two sharp, sweeping panels that arched over her breasts like a pair of folded wings. They framed her shoulders with a regal, untouchable elegance, yet met at a central plunge so deep it felt entirely illicit—a breathless, teasing drop that vanished toward her waist.
He said nothing.
Because for two seconds—possibly three—he genuinely could not.
The colour was wrong, he thought, with the detached desperation of a man trying to do figure out the rules of architecture to survive a house fire. It was the exact shade that made her skin luminous. The exact shade that would pull every eye in a room with the silent, unhurried authority of a gravitational force. He was going to spend an entire evening surrounded by people looking at her in this dress, and he was going to have to stand close enough to shield her while remaining precisely, permanently, professionally distant. Or worse, pretend to be her doting, loving boyfriend whilst remaining entirely, professionally distant and unaffected.
He ran his tongue over his teeth.
"The waist," she said, running a hand along the seam with apparent critical consideration. "Does it sit right? I can't quite tell if—"
"It fits correctly."
"Mm." She turned toward the mirror, and the silk shifted with her, catching the light. "You're very decisive today."
"You asked for my opinion."
She turned back to face him. Her eyes were very bright. Her jaw was set in a way he recognised now—the way it looked when she was pushing for something and hadn't quite gotten it yet. He held her gaze for exactly long enough to confirm he knew something was up, then moved his eyes to the window.
"Is it too much?" she pushed, brow furrowed though she didn’t strike him as too concerned at all, her hands tracing the sculpted edge of the fabric.
"No," he managed, struggling to piece together words. "Not too much. Bold design, but it, uh, suits you perfectly.” And he wasn’t lying either.
The design relied on a sophisticated balance of structure and movement. While the wing-like bodice provided a sharp, sculptural silhouette, the skirt’s devastatingly high slit added an almost liquid fluidity to the skirt. With every step, the fabric shifted, allowing for ease of movement and allowing for her leg to peek through. The result was a study in contrasts.
The overall effect was quite devastating.
The curtain shifted as Marguerite glided back in. She paused at the entrance to the fitting room, and something in her expression became warmly, immediately certain.
"Oh," she said, with the soft satisfaction of someone arriving at an obvious conclusion. "Your husband has excellent taste, dear." Her gaze went briefly, approvingly, to Jack. "You can tell by the way he looks at you." A small, knowing tilt of her head. "He prefers the red one."
The word landed in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Husband.
Samira didn't move. She was aware, with unnerving precision, of the exact position of every part of her own body—the silk against her ribcage, the heel of her shoe pressed into the carpet, the particular angle of her chin. She was aware of Marguerite smiling at her with benevolent certainty. She was aware of the mirror, and herself in it, in this dress, with this light falling the way it did.
She was aware of Jack.
Not looking. Pointedly, carefully, professionally not looking—which was its own kind of looking. The particular quality of his stillness had shifted, just fractionally. A held breath wearing the clothes of composure.
She should correct it. The word hung there, suspended, and the correction was obvious and simple and right there and she couldn't make herself say it. The correction dissolved before she could reach it.
For three seconds—four, five—she let it be true.
A normal couple. Standing in a boutique on a Thursday afternoon. Him watching her try on dresses with that terrible, burning, carefully leashed attention of his. Her flaunting herself draped in silk and daring him with her eyes. The saleswoman reading them both with the comfortable accuracy of someone who'd seen ten thousand variations of the same specific wanting.
Marguerite wasn't wrong.
She made herself look at him.
He was already looking at her. He hadn't glanced away in time, or hadn't tried to—she couldn't tell which, and it almost didn't matter. His expression was composed, completely controlled, the soldier's mask in place, but his chest rose on a breath that was just slightly too deep to be casual. She watched his jaw tighten, and she thought: there you are. And then immediately hated herself for the warmth that moved through her in response.
He said, with entirely credible ease, "Marguerite, you truly are a wonder at your job, you’ve read me like a book."
Marguerite laughed, and he smiled, rakish and entirely unaffected.
“In my defence, the two of you have clearly conspired to select the most devastating dress in all New York.”
Not a correction. Not actually, we're not— Not a flicker of discomfort externalised for Marguerite to read. Just conversation continued calmly, like a man not even bothering with confirming a fact already known. And teasing and joking about being stunned by it—her—too, in that easy self-depricating manner that was all too charming.
Samira turned back to the mirror.
Her face was perfectly composed. She made certain of it.
Her heart was doing something unsteady and furious behind her ribs. She looked at the red dress in the mirror—at herself inside it, flushed with something she couldn't name in public—and thought about how deeply, genuinely unfair it was that she had spent two weeks trying to crack him open, and he had absorbed the word husband without breaking stride, and somehow that was the most devastating thing he'd done yet.
"Well, in that case, we'll take this one," she said to Marguerite, and her voice came out smooth and decisive, every bit as controlled as his.
She did not look at him again until they were back outside.
His bedroom clock pointed to read 2:07.
Jack knew this because he had been staring at it, in the dark, with the specific focused quality of a man who has given up on sleep but hasn't yet surrendered to being awake. He'd catalogued the ceiling cracks twice. He'd run through the gala's logistical threat assessment until his vision blurred and his mind blanked. He'd counted his breaths—in for four, hold for four, out for four—until the discipline of it made him feel, counterintuitively, vaguely insane.
He was still thinking about the red dress.
Not thinking. That was too neutral a word. Haunted was closer. He was being haunted by the precise, specific fall of the silk across her hip, by the exact degree of the halter's central plunge, by the way Marguerite had said husband and the entire room had simply—stopped.
The word could have cut glass. They certainly cut him, clean through the ribs, leaving a wound that didn't even have the decency to bleed until later.But he hadn't faltered. God, he was proud of that—and sickened by it. He had stood his ground while his chest caved in, absorbing the blow with the practiced ease of a man who had spent a lifetime learning how to hide in plain sight. He had smiled. He had thrown out some charming, easy remark that sounded exactly like the husband he was supposed to be. He’d played the part so well he almost disgusted himself.
And then he'd come home, made them dinner, fled to his room and lain in the dark for two hours.
He got up, pulling on the prosthetic because it was quieter than the crutches so as to not disturb Samira and he could always slip in off when he got to the sofa. He swiped up the empty mug on his bedside table for a tea refill.
The flat was quiet in the particular way it only got in the small hours—settled and still and slightly held, like the rooms themselves were breathing. He moved by memory and ambient streetlight, not turning anything on, one hand trailing the wall through the hallway. His feet knew the floor. He'd learned it in the first week—which boards gave, which corners were closer than they seemed, how to move through the flat without making noise. Occupational habit.
He was passing her door when he stopped.
Not a decision. Just—stopped. Arrested mid-step, weight shifting, the instinctive full-body halt of a man who has heard something his mind refuses to immediately process and classify.
Then it came again.
A breath. Soft and hitched, the rhythm of it fractured, broken off at the end. The rustle of sheets—slow, then quick, then slow again. And then a sound, low and ragged and barely there, muffled into something—he had no idea, a pillow or maybe her own hand—but real and unmistakable.
His brain went entirely white.
He knew that sound. He knew it with a precision that had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with instinct, because it lived in the part of him that was below language and beyond discipline. He had heard it once before—a single night, in the rain, into his mouth—and he had been trying to forget it ever since, with an almost comical lack of success.
He should walk away.
He did not walk away.
He stood in the dark hallway, empty mug hanging loose in one hand, utterly still. Three seconds passed. Four. He could hear the clock from here—a faint, mechanical tick from the kitchen, steady and indifferent—and beneath it, from behind the door, those small soft sounds continued. He heard her exhale—longer this time, and lower, with an edge to it like something half-formed—and felt the base of his throat close.
He pressed his forehead against the wall.
Not against her door. The plaster beside it, cool and faintly rough against his skin, solid in a way that felt necessary. His eyes closed. His grip around the mug tightened until he felt the ceramic edge biting into his palm, and he welcomed that too, the same way he'd welcomed the discomfort of the wet socket in the car—something real, something manageable, something that wasn't this.
This was not manageable.
The sounds were quiet but the walls were exactly as thin as he'd noted in week one of his threat assessment walkthrough, and he was standing two feet from her door in the middle of the night holding an empty mug, and he was not walking away. He was standing here. Listening to her breathe. Listening to her unravel in private, slowly, in the specific frustrated intimacy of someone who had also lain awake too long.
Had she been thinking about the boutique?
The thought arrived and he couldn't dislodge it. Had she been thinking about the dress, the mirror, the word hanging in the air between them? Or something older—the rain, the kiss, his hands in her hair, his tongue in her mouth, his knee pressing between her legs? Or nothing to do with him at all, which would be more humiliating than either option and somehow worse?
Another soft sound, and then a long exhale, and then silence.
He stood in it.
The clock ticked. The city murmured its usual distant murmur, traffic and wind and the low ambient hum of ten thousand lives passing each other at close range. The plaster was warm now where his forehead had been resting, his own heat given back to him. His chest was moving too fast. Fuck, he was hard. He was acutely, humiliatingly aware of every part of his own body—the grip of his hand, the tension in his shoulders, the particular specific ache behind his sternum that had been there for weeks and showed no signs of resolving.
He was entirely, comprehensively gone.
He'd known it for a while. Since the rain, certainly, though if he was being honest—with himself, here, at 2:00 AM in a dark hallway, pressing his forehead to the wall outside her bedroom like a man at a confessional—probably before that. Possibly long before that. Since the first dinner, or the second. Since she'd queued up Summer Wine and sung along badly and looked at him sideways like she was daring him to find her anything other than completely enchanting.
He had no business being here. He had every reason to push off the wall, walk to the kitchen, make his tea, find his book and sit on the sofa til sunrise, or return to the ceiling. He was her protection. He was, as she had confirmed to her mother with cool unbothered precision, the consummate professional. He had already proven himself capable of catastrophic error once. He did not get to make a second.
He pushed off the wall.
He didn't move.
One more second. That was all. One more second of this agonising, airless proximity—of standing close enough that the warmth from her room seeped faintly through the door, of hearing her breathe quietly but heavily on the other side of this wall, of being a man standing just outside everything he wanted with no right to knock.
Then he went to the kitchen.
He made the tea. He found the book. He sat on the sofa in the dark until the sky outside began to turn, and he then read the same page six or seven times, and he thought about nothing at all.
That was a lie.
He thought about her.