Page 62 of The Exit Strategy

She couldn’t handle the truth at eighteen.

But the woman who kissed me back last night? The woman who pushed me past my limit and demanded answers? That woman? She’s not a broken teenager anymore.

Could she handle the trauma now?

Because what if I can’t go back? What if kissing Junie Mercer is the thread that untethers me completely? I don’t know how to stand in the wreckage of that without burning all our lives to the ground.

The answer comes to me with the sunrise. There is no going back.

I know it the way I know a structural integrity analysis is required—instinctively, inherently, with the kind of certainty that doesn’t require a calculator.

The wall is coming down, and I’ll learn how to manage the fallout before it does.

I’mat the stove making eggs when she walks in. Eggs are the only thing I can cook right now that doesn’t require emotional bandwidth because mine was obliterated ten hours ago by a woman who tasted like bourbon and ruin.

She’s in jeans and a T-shirt and not a swipe of makeup. I love her this way. There’s no armor between us. She looks like Junie—the real one.

And she’s carrying two cups of coffee from Grounds for Celebration.

She sets one on the counter next to me without saying a word. Just slides it into my space like a woman who’s been playing chess her entire life.

I look at the cup. Then I look at her.

“It’s the real stuff,” she says, meeting my eyes for the first time since my favorite thank you left her lips. “Consider the decaf war officially over.”

This isn’t just a coffee. She’s handing me a ceasefire, a recalibration of whatever we are now that we’ve crossed the unthinkable line.

I take a sip and stifle a groan. It’s so fucking good.

“Thank you,” I say. And then, because I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone, I add, “For the coffee.”

The tiniest twitch appears in her upper lip. It’s not a smile, but it’s notnota smile either.

“For just the coffee?”

My spatula slips from my fingers and clatters to the stovetop. She did not just?—

I turn to face her, but she’s already walking toward theconference room. Junie Mercer just made a joke about kissing me, and I’m comprehensively, irreversibly fucked because those walls are not going back up now.

We don’t talkabout it all day Monday. Not when I rearrange my entire office so my desk now looks out the doorway that faces her instead of the window. Not when she glances up and notices that I can now stare directly at her from my place of work. Not when she gets up for a drink and her bare feet sound on the hardwood floor.

When did bare feet become the barometer of home?

We don’t talk about it on Tuesday when she sends me the tax assessment and signs it Viper instead of Junie or Juniper, and I stare at those five letters for so long I go cross-eyed.

We don’t talk about it on Wednesday when she sets a cup of coffee down on my desk so hard it sloshes over the side and leaves a ring on the hardwood, even after wiping it away. That circle is now a permanent reminder of her—as if my mind would ever allow me to forget.

And by Thursday, I realize my mistake.

What the actual fuck is going on with my inbox?

Message from BendyWendy94.

Message from JustTheTits00.

Message from PleaseDaddyMeNow.

I scroll down, but there’s no end in sight. My entire inbox is flooded with messages I don’t dare open. I hover over one of the senders and the entire link shows up. Be my daddy dot com.