Page 35 of Bearly Out Loud

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. The screen lit the booth—a flash of white that made them both blink—and Takumi’s name glowed.

Takumi:Priya says you killed a scene and then went dark. Literally dark. You okay?

Nari typed with one hand. The other held the jacket closed at her throat.

Nari:I’m fine. The scene was a lot. Sitting in the booth.

Takumi:Alone?

She looked at Dojin’s silhouette across from her. The width of his shoulders in the phone’s fading light. The way he’d sat on a recording studio floor in a tailored suit without hesitation, because she was on the floor and that was where he wanted to be.

Nari:No.

Takumi:Is it the CEO

Nari:Yes.

Takumi:On the floor?

Nari:On the floor.

Takumi:In the dark?

Nari:In the dark.

Takumi:Nari Wixx. Is this man sitting on a floor in the dark because you had a hard day?

Nari:Don’t make it a thing.

Takumi:It is a thing. A billionaire CEO on industrial carpet in the dark because you needed company. The cat is going to hear about this.

She locked her phone. The booth went dark again.

“Takumi?” Dojin’s voice carried a smile she couldn’t see.

“Takumi.”

“Is the cat involved?”

“The cat is being briefed.”

His laugh filled the booth—quiet, warm, and close enough to feel. She pressed her face into the collar of his jacket and breathed him in and thought:

I am going to have a serious problem giving this jacket back.

I am going to have a serious problem with this man.

They stayed on the floor for another twenty minutes. They didn’t touch. They didn’t need to. The booth held them in its careful silence, and the space between them—narrowed to inches, warm despite the cold, charged with the electricity of two people who had shown each other the parts they kept hidden—said everything that neither of them was ready to say aloud.

When they finally stood, Nari kept the jacket. Wore it over her shoulders through the empty studio, into the elevator, across the lobby where the security guard’s eyes tracked from her to Dojin and back with professional interest.

At the curb, she hailed a cab. His hand caught her elbow—light, brief, the contact electric enough to make her breath skip.

“Get home safe.”

“Always do.” She slid into the cab. The jacket pooled around her, the shoulders too wide, the scent too specific, the whole garment a territory claim neither of them had acknowledged. She lifted the collar to her nose one more time as the cab pulled into traffic.

Cedar and honey and the warmth of a man who sat on floors.