"That's mine," he says. "Questa sei tu. Mia." That's you. Mine.
"Yours," I breathe.
His fingers tighten — steady, firm pressure that makes my knees buckle — and he holds me there, right on the edge, circling and pressing until I'm shaking against the glass and biting through my own lip trying not to make a sound.
"Come for me," he says. "Adesso." Now.
I come apart completely — silent and total, my hands splayed against the glass, his name nowhere and everywhere, his fingers working me through every wave until I'm boneless and trembling and the only thing holding me up is the window and his body behind me.
He follows seconds later — my name, rough and reverent, his forehead dropping to my spine, his body shuddering against mine.
We stay there.
Foreheads to the glass. Both of us breathing.
The city keeps moving below us, indifferent and alive.
"Dio mio," I say finally. To the window. My god.
I feel him smile against my shoulder.
"Prego," he says. You're welcome.
A pause.
"You know," he says, against my shoulder. "I think this counts as physical therapy."
I laugh so hard I fog the window.
We stay tangled together for a long time afterward.
At some point my fingers find it — the faint half-moon on his shoulder, just above the collarbone. Pale now. Permanent. The mark I left on him in the safehouse kitchen the night everything tilted and neither of us knew how to un-tilt it.
I trace it once.
"Still not even," I murmur.
He catches my hand. Presses it flat over the scar. Doesn't say anything — just holds it there, his pulse steady beneath my palm, like he plans to keep it.
He finds my scrubs on the floor and hands them to me without being asked. I find his tie — knocked somewhere under the desk — and hold it up.
He looks at it. At me.
"Keep it," he says.
I set it on the desk next to the key. He watches me do it with the expression of a man filing something away that matters.
"Stay," he says. Low. Just that. Not a command. An asking.
I take his hand.
The key is still on my desk. I look at it. At him. At the life on the other side of this moment — complicated, imperfect, not what I planned, entirely mine.
"I'm not yours," I say.
Understanding moves through his eyes. Not hurt. The understanding of a man who has learned the difference between owning something and choosing it.
"Good," he says.
