Watch.
Silver signet ring on my pinky finger.
King’s clothes. Armor. Something to stand between me and the part of myself that wants to drag him right back into bed and pretend the world can be kept on the other side of a locked door indefinitely.
He glances over at me while fastening his cuff links, and whatever he sees on my face is enough to make his expression shift.
“What is it?” he says.
I shake my head once. “Nothing.”
He gives me a look that says I’m transparent, and he hates it. Then again, he always did know me too well for comfort.
I turn toward the window and pretend I’m studying the skyline, because if I look at him while I ask this, I might not like what I hear. My hands settle on the edge of the console beneath the glass, marble cool under my palms.
“What happens now?” I ask.
The silence behind me isn’t long, but it’s long enough to hurt.
When I turn back, Vincenzo is standing with one cuff still unfastened, his face unreadable in that polished Vieri way that has always meant whatever sits underneath is real enough to need hiding. He sets the cuff link down on the table beside him and looks at me properly.
“That’s the first thing you’re asking.”
“Yes.”
His mouth softens around the edges. “You sound terrified.”
I laugh once, but it’s short and ugly. “That’s because I am.”
There. Fine. Honest. Let him do what he wants with it.
His eyes go darker immediately, some part of him recognizing the cost of that admission. He steps in closer.
“Of what?” he asks quietly.
That this will fade,I think.That now you’ve had a taste of me again, now you’ve gotten back one impossible night, and one stupidly peaceful morning, it’ll start slipping through your fingers.
That what we were will feel larger than what we are, because memory always edits pain better than reality does.
That you’ll go back to being a king and a husband, a son, and a liar in all the ways that matter, and I’ll go back to being Pakhan with blood up to my elbows, and this will turn into one more beautiful thing that couldn’t survive contact with the daylight.
I don’t say all of that. Even now, I have some pride left.
So, I cross my arms over my chest and look at him and say, “That it’ll fizzle out.”
He blinks once. “What?”
I force myself to hold his stare. “This. Us. Whatever the fuck we’re calling it now. Eight years is a long time to miss something. Long enough to build it into something bigger in your head than real life can survive. I’m asking what happens when this stops being a revelation and starts being inconvenient.”
The words sound colder than they feel. Good. Better that than let him hear the rawer version, which is closer to: I don’t know how to lose you after getting you back.
His face changes by degrees while I’m speaking. Not offended or even hurt. More like he’s trying to decide whether to kiss me or shake me.
Then he lets out a breath through his nose and steps all the way in, close enough that I can smell his cologne faintly under the clean scent from the shower. “You think that’s what this is?”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
He looks almost angry for a second. “Goddamn you.”
