“Good morning, little girl,” he said.
My bottom ached inside and out. A warm, settled, satisfying ache that reminded me comprehensively of everything that had happened the night before. I shifted against the pillows, felt it bloom across my skin, and tried very hard not to let my expression do anything revealing.
His eyes said he noticed anyway.
“Morning,” I managed, my voice rough from sleep. I pushed myself upright against the headboard and he placed the tray carefully across my lap, then poured coffee into both cups and handed me mine. I wrapped both hands around it and took a long, grateful sip.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, which was true. I felt warm and heavy and looked after in a way I had no intention of articulating.
“Sore?”
I gave him a look over the rim of my cup. “That’s a leading question.”
His lips curved. “Answer it.”
“A little,” I admitted.
He nodded once, satisfied, and reached over to steal a piece of toast from my tray. I watched him take a bite with the easy confidence of a man entirely comfortable in his own home—our home, still a thought that startled me with its warmth—and settled more comfortably against the pillows.
“Eat,” he said.
I ate. The eggs were perfect. I told him so.
“Thank you,” he said. “I made them myself.”
I looked at him with genuine surprise. “You cooked?”
“I do occasionally know how.”
“Your chef is going to be devastated.”
“She has the morning off.” He watched me eat with an expression of quiet contentment that I had learned, over time, was one of his most authentic ones. He liked taking care of me. It wasn’t in a way that diminished me; more like he knew exactly who I was and had never once asked me to be anything smaller. He took care of me in the simple, fundamental way of a man who had decided that my wellbeing was something he was personally responsible for and took that responsibility seriously.
I had spent years being fiercely, exhaustingly self-sufficient.
I had not understood, until him, that being cared for was not the same thing as being diminished.
I finished my eggs, most of the fruit, and a second cup of coffee. He refilled it without being asked. I leaned back against the headboard with the warm mug cradled in my palms, looked out the bedroom window at the morning skyline, and felt, not for the first time and not with any less force for the repetition, the specific fullness of being exactly where I was supposed to be.
Which was, naturally, when I made my mistake.
He had left his phone on the nightstand while he went to put away the tray. I was not going to look at it. I had absolutely no intention of looking at it.
But then the screen lit up.
I looked.
It was a message from a contact saved only asMand the preview text read:Dinner Tuesday confirmed, she doesn’t know yet.
And the screen went dark.
I stared at it.
An irrational jolt surged through me. It was a feeling that was quick, hot, and completely disproportionate to reality. It was the specific species of jealous fury that I had genuinely believed I was too intelligent to feel. I knew better. I knew him. I knew thatMcould be any one of a hundred professional contacts, thatshealmost certainly referred to some business associate or a mutual acquaintance or approximately anything other than what the worst and pettiest corner of my brain had immediately assumed.
I knew all of that.
