Page 113 of The Exit Strategy

“You were thinking about it,” she mumbles.

“Thinking isn’t a crime, Viper.”

One eye cracks open. Bloodshot. Deeply suspicious. Sexy as fuck. She stares across the room, then at my bed as though she’s just realizing she’s not in her room. Then her curious expression lands on me.

She stares at me for the longest moment before closing her eyes again.

“Okay,” she grumbles with her normal amount of early morning irritation.

“Okay?” What the hell is she talking about?

“Not a dream. Confirmed. Processed. Calculating. Proceed.”

My chest does something I don’t have a word for. Crackling, maybe? Aching, definitely. Expanding, a certainty. I kiss the top of her head before my brain can tell me not to. The window for doing that without having to explain myself feels narrow, and I intend to use every inch of it.

She sighs against my chest.

I memorize how right it feels as we lie here.

I don’t even know how much time passes. Long enough that the light outside commits to a sunrise. Long enough that her breathing evens out again, and I’m not sure if she’s fallen back asleep or if she’s pretending, hoping to avoiddiscussing complications like the morning after or the walk of shame.

Though there’s no shame here. At least not for me.

It’s right. The most right thing in my entire fucking miserable excuse for a life.

I don’t say it outright, but it rumbles in my chest like a tidal wave.

For years, I’ve been dismantling my own wants one by one. You can’t miss what you don’t allow yourself to name. You can’t lose what you never let yourself have.

Turns out that system has limits, and this one has just expired.

By seven,I’ve managed to extract myself from the bed without waking her, which should qualify me for some kind of engineering commendation.

She sleeps like a woman who’s filed a grievance with gravity, for fuck’s sake. Arms flung wide. Mouth open—with hair in it again, which, after twenty minutes of watching her breathe around it, apparently bothers me more than it bothers her. The sheet is kicked down to her waist, not that I mind the stunning view, but I pull it up over her shoulder because if I stare at her bare back for another second, I will climb back into that bed and fulfill every dirty desire I’ve ever harbored for her.

Instead, I yank on a pair of sweatpants from my dresser, leave another pair along with a T-shirt for her on the edge of the bed, then pad down the hall, thankful that the house is still quiet.

Which means I’ve got maybe forty minutes before NanaMae shows up and comes to conclusions I’m not prepared to discuss.

I move on autopilot, making coffee while last night flashes through my mind with a very explicit highlight reel that forces me to think of every unsexy thing I can imagine just to get my erection under control.

In hindsight, sweatpants after a night with Junie are a terrible idea, so I put all my focus into making two cups of coffee.

Hers with too much oat milk. Mine, black, like I’ve tried to make my heart, only to have her chip away at the char to find the bruised bits beneath. Then I stand there, barefoot on my kitchen floor, staring at our two mugs sitting side by side as though they represent a future I could have—as soon as I remove the obstacles.

My phone buzzes on the counter next to them.

I don’t even look at it.

The rhythm of these buzzes, the cadence of this particular interruption that I’ve been receiving for six years, has never, in any universe, been good news. The phone can wait as long as it takes for us to drink the coffee I’m placing way too much significance on.

It buzzes again.

Fucking. Annoying.

I flip it face down without reading the notification and stir Junie’s mug to evenly distribute her sugar and milk.

Whatever the notification is will only make my day worse, and today is one of the best ones I’ve had in a decade. I’d like to keep it that way for at least as long as it takes for the woman upstairs to wake up and decide what happens next.