Chapter 20 #4
"Check," Marisol says. The word is quiet. Almost casual. But her mouth is doing the thing — the twitch at the corners, the suppressed smile she has been fighting since the piece landed.
Guido looks up at her. His dark eyes — Zina's eyes, warm and grave — hold her gaze for two seconds. Then the corner of his mouth lifts. A real smile. The kind I have seen him give exactly four times since I met him.
"Checkmate in three," he says. "Finish it."
She finishes it. Queen takes bishop. Rook blocks. Marisol slides her knight into the gap Guido left on the back rank and the king falls.
She smiles. Full. Unguarded. The smile of a thirteen-year-old girl who has just beaten someone she respects at something that matters and cannot contain the heat of it no matter how hard her training tells her to try.
Guido reaches across the board and tips his king with one finger. Concession. Formal. The chess player's surrender.
"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.
Romeo's hand closes around my wrist.
Not tight. Not demanding. Just present.
His thumb presses into the thin scar on my left wrist, and I freeze. He's not doing it on purpose—he doesn't even realize, probably, that his thumb has found the old kitchen scar—but the contact sends a current through me. I look up at him. He shakes his head. Once. Slow.
"Leave it," he says. His voice is low, rough at the edges, stripped of the smooth polish he uses on the rest of the world. "Don't cover up. Not tonight."
I could argue. I could point out that I'm cold, or that the nightgown is comfortable, or that standing in my underwear in the bathroom while he looks at me like that makes me feel exposed in ways I'm still learning to tolerate.
But I don't. Because his hand is still on my wrist, and his eyes are asking for something, and I've spent too long calculating the cost of giving. Tonight, I don't run the math. I let the nightgown hang on its hook. I let him look.
And he does look. His gaze travels over me slowly—not the slick, appreciative sweep he uses in public, the one that's designed to flatter and disarm.
This is different. This is inventory. This is a man cataloging every inch of skin like he's afraid he'll forget, like he needs to memorize the exact shade of my brown skin against the black lace, the curve of my waist, the faint marks on my hips where the jeans pressed too tight.
His hand releases my wrist and slides up my arm, trailing heat, until his fingers brush my collarbone. He traces it left to right, then back again, like he's drawing a map.
"You're staring," I say.
"I know." He doesn't look away. "I'm allowed."
"You're allowed? Is that a royal decree?"
His mouth curves. Not a smirk—something softer, something almost surprised, like he still can't believe I'm here. Like he still can't believe he's allowed to look and touch and have this.
"Yeah," he says. "Royal decree. From me. Right now. You have to stand there and let me look at you."
"I don't have to do anything."
"Nova." The way he says my name—low, reverent, like a prayer he doesn't deserve to speak—stops my breath. His hand moves from my collarbone to my neck, his fingers curving around the side, his thumb resting against my jaw. "Please."
The word undoes me.
Romeo doesn't say please.
He cajoles and charms and manipulates situations until the answer becomes inevitable, but he doesn't ask. Not like this. Not with his voice stripped bare and his eyes holding mine and his thumb tracing the line of my jaw like he's learning the shape of me.
I swallow. His thumb follows the movement. "Okay," I whisper.
He steps closer, and I step back until my shoulders hit the bathroom wall. The tile is cool against my skin, a contrast to the heat radiating off his body as he crowds into my space.
His t-shirt brushes my bare stomach, and I feel the fabric like a brand.
His hands slide down my arms, lifting them, pressing my palms flat against the wall on either side of my head.
He holds them there—loosely, I could break free if I wanted—and leans in.
His mouth finds my neck again, but this time it's not soft.
This time his teeth graze my pulse point, and my breath catches.
"Romeo—"
"Shh." His lips move against my skin, the word a vibration. "Let me."
I don't argue. His mouth trails down my neck, open and wet, tasting me. His tongue traces my collarbone, then lower, following the edge of my bra.
His hands release my wrists and slide down my sides, his palms hot and sure against my ribs. I keep my hands on the wall because he put them there, and something about holding that position—giving him that small obedience—makes heat pool low in my belly. My fingers curl against the tile.
His thumbs hook into the straps of my bra, sliding them down my shoulders with agonizing slowness. The lace catches on my nipples before falling away, and I hear his sharp intake of breath as he looks at me. Really looks.
The bathroom light is unforgiving—I can see every flaw, every stretch mark, every place where my body falls short of the polished perfection he's used to. But Romeo doesn't seem to see any of that. His eyes darken, his jaw tightens, and when he speaks, his voice is wrecked.