Phoenix
Aweek after the three in the morning fight, I come home feeling differently.
It’s not particularly dramatic though. I’m still in my jacket, still with files under my arm, still the person who has come through this door every night for the last eight months.
But I've been sitting on something since the parking garage outside the Wilshire Division station. It’s something I didn't tell her when I drove home that day and I can’t keep it to myself much longer.
She's at the kitchen table when I come in. Laptop open, manuscript on the screen, the half-empty glass of water she refills throughout the day. She looks up when she hears me and reads my face.
"My father said something on the phone," I say. "The day I took the Tennessee documents to the police. I've been sitting on it and I shouldn't have."
She closes the laptop.
"I called Dad from the parking garage after I left the police station," I say. "I told him what you found. What you did with it." I look at my hands on the table. "There was this silence after. Long enough that I checked the screen to see if the call had dropped."
She waits. I hold my breath and then let it out.
"He said he was proud of me. Both of us.
What we built together, what you did finding Ashley.
" I look up at her. "He's never said it like that.
Not once. About both of us, about what you did.
It just came out plain, no buildup, and then he hung up and I sat in that parking garage for fourteen minutes because I didn't trust myself to drive. "
She stares for a bit before getting up and putting her arms around me.
We stay like that for a while, her arms around my neck and my face against her hair.
The kitchen quiet around us. She doesn't say anything.
She doesn't need to. She just holds on and so do I, and after a minute or two that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach goes away.
“Thank you for telling me," she says finally.
"Should have told you sooner."
"Yes," she says. "But you told me now."
She pulls back. Her hands are still on my shoulders. Her face in the kitchen light is steady and warm and she's looking at me with the expression she gets when she's decided something.
“Are you hungry?" she asks.
"Not yet," I say.
She holds my gaze for a moment, before saying, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a while."
“Go ahead.”
She hesitates and I press. What could it be? She takes a deep breath and leans over and whispers it in my ear.
I look at her for a moment. She holds my gaze without flinching. She’s not pretending to be brave keeping her chin level.
"Yes," I say.
Something relaxes in her face. It’s not relief exactly.
I take her hand and we go upstairs.
I turn on the lamp on my side because this isn't a dark room scene. I want to see her. She sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of her and take her face in my hands and look at her for a moment.
"We go slow," I say. "And if anything doesn't work, we stop and try something else."
"Okay," she says.
"Tell me if you want to stop."
"I will."
I believe her. That's the thing about Jade. She says what she means and she means what she says and I trust that. I've trusted it since the belt two weeks ago, since the kitchen table fight, since the beach and the three in the morning, and every conversation we've had.
I kiss her slowly. She relaxes into it. I take my time with everything. I move my hands over her slowly, learning everything about her. Her shoulders, her back, the curve of her waist. She makes a small sound when I find the spot below her ear and I stay there until her hands grip my shirt.
We get rid of the clothes without rushing any of it.
I lay her back on the bed and work my way down her throat, her collarbone, her ribs, paying attention to every place I've been and a few I haven't mapped yet.
She's warm under my hands and her fingers are in my hair and she makes small sounds that tell me where to stay and where to go and I listen to all of them.
"Still okay?" I ask against her skin.
"Very okay," she says.
I work my way back up. I kiss her mouth and her jaw and the inside of her wrist and I feel her pulse fast under my lips. Then I tell her to turn over.
I take my time with this too.
My hands move over her back, her shoulders, the base of her spine. I press my lips there and feel her exhale. I keep my touch light and warm, adjusting as I go. She's relaxed under my hands but her pulse is fast, anticipation sets in at her shoulders.
"Still with me?" I ask.
“Yes.”
I use everything I know.
I start with my hands, slow and deliberate, reading her responses.
Her breath catches when I find the right pressure and I stay there, working her until her hips move toward me and her hands grip the sheet.
I move lower. My mouth replaces my hands and she makes a sound against the pillow and her thighs tighten around my shoulders and I don't stop, not when she pulls at my hair, not when she says my name the first time.
I keep going until she comes apart under my mouth, her whole body pulling tight, that long exhale, her hands fisting the pillow above her head.
I give her a moment. My hand moves slowly up her spine.
Then I reach for the nightstand.
I take my time with this too. My hands on her hips, adjusting, reading every sound and shift.
She turns her face to the side and I can see her expression—eyes closed, lips parted, completely present, completely here.
That's the thing that undoes me. She asked for this.
She's here for all of it, not bracing or retreating, just here, trusting me with every inch of it.
I press my lips to her shoulder blade. She exhales.
I move slowly. Check in without words—a hand at her hip, a pause, her small nod. She reaches back and grips my thigh and that's all the answer I need. I find a rhythm and stay with it, unhurried, watching her face. Her breathing changes. Her grip on my thigh tightens.
When she comes the second time it's slower and deeper than the first—a long shudder, my name in a voice I've never heard from her before, her knuckles white on the pillow.
I hold her through every second of it. When I let myself go it's with my face pressed to her shoulder and her name in my throat and my hands gripping her hips hard enough that she'll feel it tomorrow.
We stay still for a long time after.
I roll to my back and pull her against me and she settles with her head on my chest and neither of us speaks. The lamp on my side is still on, casting its amber circle across the ceiling, and the city outside the windows is going about its night.
After a while she laughs.
Not at anything in particular. Just—laughs, a genuine laugh, the kind that comes out when you're fully relaxed and something small catches you, the kind I haven't heard from her in weeks. It's short and quiet and it fills the room.
I feel it in my chest before I understand why.
I've been waiting to hear that. Somewhere in the last eight months, I've been waiting for her to laugh like that. Not at anything in particular but just because she’s here with me and we are together.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing," she says, still smiling against my chest. "Just—I needed that."
"Why?"
She tilts her head up to look at me. "I didn't know if it was allowed."
I look at her. "Everything's allowed," I say. "That's the whole point."
She holds my gaze for a moment. Then she puts her head back down on my chest and I feel her smile against my skin.
The lamp hums. The city moves outside. Her breathing evens out slowly and I lie there in the amber light with my hand moving through her hair and think about my father saying I'm proud of you. Both of you.
I think I understand now what he was proud of.
Not the Tennessee documents or the Richard investigation or anything having to do with business. It’s not any of the specific things we did or built.
I think he was just proud of us for being who we are.
I close my eyes.
Jade shifts against my side, already most of the way asleep, and I hold her tightly.