Page 237 of A Taste of Vanilla

And still.

Still, I do not have to hand over forgiveness to be fair. I don’t have to make myself softer for someone else’s redemption arc. I can take the truth and leave absolution on the table for another day.

I look down at the folder again. Then, at my people.

“I want copies,” I tell them firmly.

“And then?” Marley asks.

“Then we decide how loud the truth needs to be.”

Oliver smiles.

Marley opens her laptop on the counter.

“The Receipt pastry is happening,” Dev whispers.

Warren looks at me like he sees every emotion I’m feeling and desperately wantsto take them away. The rage and restraint. The refusal to become smaller.

“Are you okay?” he asks softly.

I’m not.

“No,” I say honestly. “But I’m ready.”

His eyes warm. “Okay.”

twenty-one

. . .

Top-Five Trauma

HALSTON

I’m wearingWarren’s shirt when Marley finds out.

Objectively, this is terrible timing.

The shirt is dark gray and soft from too many washes. It’s too large on me in the exact way a shirt should be when it belongs to a man built like Warren. It’s the shirt he’s left at my place before sneaking down to the kitchen in the morning.

It smells like him, too. Clean soap and coffee.

It’s hanging off of my shoulder while I stand barefoot in my apartment, holding a mug of coffee that Warren made me before I woke up.

Warren is at the kitchenette washing a pan he used to make eggs. He’s shirtless, his hair loose from when I pulled it free twenty minutes ago and dragged my fingers through it as I kissed the side of his neck until his fingers tightened on my hips.

His tattoos look sexy. Black ink over his broad shoulders. Enough to make my mouth water.

My bed is unmade, but my coffee is perfect. My thighs are still warm from where he lay between them ten minutes ago and kissed me like he had nowhere else to be.

It’s the kind of scene I would have held in my mind for months if I’d watched it in a movie.

Warren glances over his shoulder. “You’re smiling.”

“I’d like to consider it resting joy face.”

“Is that a thing?”