Page 111 of Knight
"Again tomorrow?" she asks.
"Every morning."
Dinner is loud. Tomás talks with his mouth full. Marisol argues with Guido about whether the Sicilian Defense is overrated. Romeo eats everything on his plate and reaches for seconds and I kick his ankle under the table because the chicken was supposed to last two meals and he is eating like a man who just discovered food.
"Ow."
"Save some for tomorrow."
"I'll buy more chicken."
"You don't know how to buy chicken."
"I'll learn."
"You can't cook it."
"I'll learn that too."
Tomás laughs. Guido hides his smile behind his glass. Marisol rolls her eyes and steals the last piece of chicken off Guido's plate while he is distracted.
This is the noise. The noise I clawed toward for two years on Delancey and never reached. Six people in a kitchen arguing about chicken and chess and volcano levels and whether strategy is cheating. Imperfect. Mismatched. A mafia heir and a stripper and an exiled queen's son and two children who learned to survive before they learned to multiply fractions.
We should not work.
We work.
After dishes. After Tomás brushes his teeth — with toothpaste this time, verified by Marisol who stationed herself in the bathroom doorway like a health inspector. After bedtime stories and nightlights and Guido letting himself out with a quiet wave and a chess board tucked under his arm.
After all of it.
Romeo closes the bedroom door.
The door clicks shut behind us, and the sound is different tonight. Not the careful, measured click of two people navigating a minefield. Not the desperate, urgent slam of bodies that need to collide before the world catches up. This is the soft, deliberate sound of a room sealing itself around the two of us, and everything outside ceases to exist.
I hear Romeo lean against the door for a moment, and I can picture him without turning—the exhale, the slight drop of his shoulders, the way the day finally releases its grip on him.
The bedroom holds us in amber light. The lamp in the corner flickers, throwing long shadows across the exposed beams overhead, and the jasmine I left burning on the dresser has filled the room with something thick and sweet.
Warm wood and warm skin. The distant hum of the city filters through the window, but it sounds far away. Irrelevant. Nothing exists beyond this room, beyond the four walls that smell like both of us now.
I walk toward the bathroom, my bare feet quiet on the hardwood, and Romeo follows. I can feel him behind me—the particular gravity of his attention, the way the air shifts when he enters a space.
The bathroom light is harsh after the bedroom's amber glow, and I squint at my reflection as I reach for my toothbrush. My hair is a mess—my natural curls escaping the loose bun I'd twisted them into hours ago, dark and wild around my face. Mascara smudged beneath my eyes. I look like I've lived through today, and I have.
I squeeze toothpaste onto the bristles and bring it to my mouth, watching myself in the mirror, watching the woman staring back at me who looks lighter than she did this morning.
Then Romeo steps up behind me. He doesn't announce himself. He doesn't need to. His hands find my hips first—just resting there, his thumbs pressing into the dip of my lower back. His breath touches the curve of my neck a second before his lips do. The kiss is soft. Unhurried.
His mouth presses against the spot just below my hairline, where the tension always gathers, and I feel my spine loosen. The toothbrush hovers near my mouth. I stare at our reflection—at his dark head bent over my shoulder, at his hands spanning my hips, at the way we fit together like this.
He kisses the same spot again, then moves an inch to the left, his lips dragging slowly across my skin. A third kiss, lower, where my neck meets my shoulder. Each one lingers. Each one says something his charm never could.
I spit into the sink, rinse my mouth, wipe my lips with the back of my hand. When I turn, Romeo is watching me with those deep green eyes—warm and dark and patient. The sparkle of mischief is there, but it's quiet tonight. Subdued. What replaces it is something more settled. Something that doesn't need to perform.
I hold his gaze for a moment, then reach for the hem of my shirt. I pull it over my head in one motion, dropping it on the counter. My jeans come next—the button, the zipper, the shimmy to push them down my hips and kick them toward the hamper.
I'm standing in my black lace panties and bra, the set I bought myself three months ago because I was tired of wearing things that were purely practical, and I reach for my satin nightgown where it hangs on the hook behind the door.
