"Get in."
"I've heard that before," she smirks.
"It worked before."
I duck my head to hold her gaze. "Get. In."
She considers her options for approximately three seconds, her attention going to the empty street like it might offer a better argument than I have. Another eye roll, and she gets in, closes the door with more force than necessary. The car has soft lock, for crying out loud, but she's never figured that out.
She pulls her seatbelt on, kicks off her sneakers and tucks her knees up. The noise in my head stops. Just like that. Because every space I own, she makes home. I shouldn't like that as much as I do.
She's not wearing makeup, I notice, her face clean and glowing in the light of the dash, and I need to stop staring.
"That didn't take you long," she observes, settling deeper into the seat.
"Figured I'd catch you this way."
"Nice PJs, Callahan." She smirks, hugs her knees closer, looks straight ahead.
I pull out from the curb with a matching smirk and don't answer that.
She turns to watch the dark street moving past her window, and I drive, and neither of us feels the need to fill it. That's always been one of the things I like about being in this car with her. She doesn't perform comfort. She just is.
Except it isn't the same silence it used to be. This car used to feel like neutral ground, the one place we could exist near each other without everything pressing in. Now it feels like all of that is sitting in the back seat, present and patient, waiting to be acknowledged.
"Drive around?" she asks quietly.
I drive around.
I take the long way along the water, the road that curves past the harbor where the boats sit quietly in their slips and the street lamps make gold stripes on the black surface below. She watches it with her chin tipped up. I watch the road. And I watch her.
We don't talk. I don't need her to talk. We can just be here and it's enough.
I park as close to the water as I can get and settle back to watch the tide shift.
She leans forward and presses the screen until she finds what she's looking for, hits play, and sits back. The opening beat comes through the speakers, a slow unhurried pulse. I recognize it in about four seconds, though I couldn't name it.
She has her head back against the seat, eyes fixed on the water, so I take her in. The line of her profile. That mouth with the curve in the middle that makes her look like she's always halfway to a pout. I could reach out and trace that line, press my face into her hair and breathe her in. I want to rest my face in the crook of her neck and stay there until my heart goes back to normal.
Our eyes meet across the dim glow of the dashboard. I don't know which one of us is going to break first. I'm gripping the wheel harder than necessary, and her expression says she's waiting for permission she shouldn't want.
And just like that, the fight leaves me. All of it. Gone.
"One song," I say. Surely, I am allowed to have her for one song only?
Her eyes soften, the want in them so obvious it almost hurts.
"Just one song," she echoes, barely above a whisper.
I unbuckle her belt. She unfolds from her seat and slides across the console into my lap.
My hands find her hips before I can think better of it, fingers pressing into the soft give of her through her clothes, pulling her flush against me. I exhale, finally.
She's in my arms, in my hands, on me. My thumbs trace the curve of her hips through the fabric like they've been aching to, and I can finally let go of that death grip on the wheel. The one I hold like a lifeline every time I'm near her, just so I don't do exactly this.
My whole body is tuned to her in a way that feels dangerous. But so right.
Then she moves, and that is the end of anything reasonable. She kisses me first this time. Slower than the frantic heat of the firehouse, slower than the stolen press on the porch. But god, the certainty of it.
