Page 116 of Knight
Then Romeo's elbow hits the headboard with a sharp crack.
"Ow—fuck—"
I snort against his shoulder, the sound completely undignified, and then I'm laughing—really laughing, the kind that shakes your whole body and makes your eyes water. He lifts his head and looks at me with mock offense.
"You're laughing at my pain?"
"Your elbow hit the headboard." I'm wheezing now. "We just had the most incredible sex of my life and your elbow hit the headboard."
"The most incredible sex of your life?" His grin is crooked, adorable. "Not just incredible. The most."
"Don't let it go to your head." I'm still laughing, still shaking, and he's smiling down at me with an expression that makes my heart do something complicated. "You're already insufferable."
"You love it."
I look up at him—at his messy hair and his swollen lips and his ridiculous, beautiful face—and I feel something shift in my chest. Something settling into place. "Yeah," I say softly. "I do."
His smile softens. He rolls off me, pulling me with him until I'm tucked against his side, my head on his chest, my fingers tracing lazy patterns on his skin. The lamp flickers, throwing shadows across the ceiling. The jasmine hangs heavy in the air.
"Hey," he says after a long moment.
"Hey."
"Today was a good day."
I think about everything that led us here—the fighting, the fear, the moments when I was sure this would all fall apart. I think about the dinner we just had, the kids asleep down the hall, the way Romeo looked at me across the table like I was the only person in the room. I think about his hands on me, unhurried and reverent, and the way he said my name like a prayer.
"Yeah," I say, and I mean it more than I've ever meant anything. "It was."
His arm tightens around me, and I feel his lips press against the top of my head. I close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat—steady, strong, real. The penthouse holds us in its warmth, and the sound of our breathing fills the room like the last note of a song that hasn't quite ended.
I'm not afraid anymore. For the first time in my life, I'm lying in the arms of someone who chose me—fully, freely, with open eyes—and I'm not calculating the cost. I'm not preparing for him to leave. I'm just here. Present. Whole.
"Romeo?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm glad it's you."
His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. His hand finds my chin, tilts my face up, and he kisses me—soft, lingering, tasting of laughter and love and the particular sweetness of survival.
"I'm glad it's you too," he whispers against my lips. "I'm so glad it's you."
The lamp flickers one last time and goes still, casting us in warm amber light, and the penthouse holds the sound of our heartbeats the way a church holds the last note of a song.
Afterward.
The bedroom is darker. Romeo's breathing has slowed — deep, steady, the cadence of a man who sleeps fully now. His arm is heavy across my waist. His face is pressed into the pillow and his mouth is slightly open and the Patek Philippe ticks against the wrist resting on my hip.
I lie still and I listen to the penthouse.
I know Tomás is sleeping peacefully. The deep, trusting rhythm of a boy who has not had a nightmare in three weeks. The hum of the security system — low, constant, the electronic heartbeat of walls that hold.
And faintly — so faintly I almost miss it — Marisol's music. Through the wall. A song I do not recognize, played at low volume, the tinny melody leaking through plaster and paint.
She listens to music at night now. She does not need it to block out noise or cover the sound of arguments from other apartments or fill the silence left by a mother who took a photograph and left her children. She listens because she wants to. Because she is thirteen and music is what thirteen-year-olds reach for when the world stops feeling like something to survive and starts feeling like something to live in.
I close my eyes.
