CHAPTER FIVE #3
She kisses me the way she reads a green — thoroughly, patiently, with total attention to slope and speed and every subtle break.
Her mouth is warm and firm and unhurried.
She tastes like peppermint and the red wine she was probably drinking when I knocked.
Her fingers tighten on my jaw, angling my head, and the precision of the adjustment is so exactly Nerys that I feel something crack open in my chest.
I grab her waist. Both hands. Pulling her toward me, trying to close the distance, trying to deepen the kiss into something faster and harder and more like the way I want everything — immediate, consuming, all at once.
She lets me pull her closer. For three seconds, her body is pressed against mine — the height, the lean solidity of her, the warmth of her stomach against my ribs — and her mouth opens against mine and I taste her and I make a sound against her lips that I will deny later and remember forever.
She breaks the kiss.
Steps back. My hands are still on her waist. She reaches down and removes them — gently, precisely, placing them at my sides the way she'd replace a club in the bag.
"That's what you asked about," she says. Her voice is steady. Her breathing is not. "Now you know."
She goes inside. The door closes. The lock clicks with the small, definitive sound of a woman who will not open it again tonight.
I stand in the corridor.
My lips feel swollen. My jaw feels warm where her thumb pressed. My hands feel empty in a way that has nothing to do with whether they're holding something.
I call Bisi before I reach my own room. She answers on the second ring.
"It's ten o'clock, Tala."
"Restructure the contract. Tonight. Whatever Phaedra needs. Independent representation, guaranteed compensation, termination protections. All of it."
Silence. Three beats.
"This is about Quillan."
"This is about making the arrangement equitable."
"This is about wanting to sleep with your caddie."
"This is about wanting to be allowed to explore a relationship with a woman who will not let me touch her until she is professionally protected from me, and she is right to demand that, and I am going to make it happen."
Bisi is quiet again. Longer this time. I can hear her thinking — the particular quality of silence that means she's calculating whether my current emotional state is an asset or a liability.
"I'll call Phaedra in the morning."
"Tonight."
"Phaedra Lo does not take calls after nine PM. I know this because I have tried. She will respond to an email with a proposal and a meeting time, and I will send that email now. The restructuring will be done properly and it will take as long as it takes. You will not rush this."
"I'm not rushing."
"You have never in your life not rushed, Tala. Let me do this correctly. Let her attorney review everything. Let the protections be real, not performative. If this woman matters to you beyond a tournament fling, you can wait a few days."
She matters.
I don't say it because saying it would give Bisi leverage and Bisi has enough leverage already. But the truth sits in my chest like a stone, warm and heavy and not going anywhere.
"Send the email," I say.
"Already drafting."
She hangs up. I stand in my room. My back is against the door. The lock presses into my spine.
I touch my jaw where Nerys held me. The skin is still warm. Or I'm imagining it. Or I've overheated. Or I'm twenty-seven years old and have kissed more people than I can count with any precision, and none of them — not a single one — held my face like it was something worth steadying.
She kissed me the way she caddies. With preparation. With attention. With the absolute certainty of someone who has done the math and decided to commit.
And then she stopped.
Because she could.
Because Nerys Quillan can do the thing I cannot — she can feel the impulse, acknowledge it, and choose not to follow it past the point where it becomes reckless.
I press my back harder against the door.
My lips are still swollen. My hands are still empty.
My body is humming at a frequency that has nothing to do with golf and everything to do with the sound she made when I pulled her against me — a small, involuntary catch of breath, the only moment in two weeks where her composure cracked entirely, and it lasted half a second and I heard it and I will never, for as long as I live, stop wanting to hear it again.
I want to break down that door. Walk three rooms. Knock again.
Tell her I don't care about contracts or power dynamics or professional frameworks.
Tell her to open the door and let me in and kiss me like that again, longer, deeper, with her hands in my hair and my body against the wall and no stopping.
I don't.
Not because I'm virtuous.
Because she asked me to trust the read.
And the read says: wait. Do this correctly. Give her the protections she needs. Let the contract be rebuilt. Let the power equalize.
Play the course, not the impulse.
I walk to the bed. Lie down. The ceiling is white. The air conditioning hums. My body is a contested territory between what I want and what I've just learned I'm capable of choosing instead.
Disciplined, she called me today.
For the first time in my life, I'm going to earn it off the course too.