His breath leaves him slowly.
He does not look away. That is how I know the answer will cost him.
“No.”
The word lands between us, heavy and clean.
My pulse trips.
His gaze drops to my mouth, then comes back. “My turn.”
I nod.
“If I ask you to wait until I know the difference,” he says, “will you?”
That one hurts more.
Because it is not a question about sex.
It is a question about whether I can want him without taking from him.
“Yes,” I say.
His eyes close.
Then his forehead rests against mine, and nothing about the room gets easier.
We lie like that with the lamp burning and our clothes half-gone and nothing finished, which is somehow more naked than if we had let it finish. His hand finds mine at the edge of the blanket. Not possessive or sweet enough to be safe. Just his fingers threading through mine while both of us stare at the ceiling and pretend the room has not changed shape around us.
I let my thumb drag once over his knuckles, over the damage there, and feel him go very still beside me.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
“Which part?”
I turn my head.
He does not.
It is the closest either of us comes to saying what almost happened.
Then the room comes back.
The laptop on the table. The blank draft. My phone face down beside it with Gil’s deadline waiting inside.
Ryan sits up on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees.
I pull my knees in and reach for my shirt.
“The article still runs Tuesday,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You don’t owe me a softer story.”
The sentence surprises me enough that I look at him.
His back is to me. Broad shoulders. Marks from my nails already rising red on his skin.