Chapter 17
seventeen
. . .
By the time I got to Burton Creative’s rooftop mixer, the city had already gone full evening. Downtown looked expensive in that way Pittsburgh sometimes surprised people with, all glass, gold, and river-dark shine against an ink black sky.
My overnight bag sat in the back seat, packed with a change of clothes for work tomorrow. Toiletries. A fresh shirt. A tie rolled instead of folded because I wasn’t trying to wrinkle my own life up over romance.
I hadn’t brought it because I assumed anything.
I brought it because somewhere between Talia leaving a pair of heels by my front door and me waking up twice last week with her asleep across my chest, I had stopped pretending I liked leaving her house at midnight just because convention said I should take my Black ass home.
I got out, headed through the lobby, and took the elevator up with a few people who smelled like expensive cologne, fresh makeup, and whatever confidence came from being invited somewhere with a view.
The elevator doors opened into a low-lit lounge that spilled straight out onto the rooftop. Warm air moved in from the terrace, carrying music, perfume, and the low, layered sound of people enjoying themselves without having to wonder if the room had been built with them in mind.
Beyond the glass doors, string lights crossed overhead in clean lines, and the city stretched out around the building like part of the decor.
High-top tables sat between planters full of deep greenery and dark florals.
Low lounge seating curved around small tables with candles set low enough to make everybody’s skin look good.
The bar ran along one side under a black awning, bottles catching gold light every time the bartender reached for something.
Nothing looked accidental, but none of it felt stiff either.
My baby worked on this.
Late nights on my couch and hers, laptop balanced on her pretty thighs, tablet propped beside a glass of wine, her voice calm but firm while she went back and forth with vendors who kept trying to make safe choices and call them elegant.
I had watched her reject pale mockups, question lighting plans, push for richer textures, better florals, warmer wood, music that actually fit the room, and signage that did not look like it had been ordered in panic from somebody’s cousin’s printer.
Burton Creative’s name was on the event, and the hotel group had the rooftop, the sponsor, and the budget. But Monarch Row had clearly influenced the feeling of the room. This looked like Talia’s work. Not because it screamed for attention. Because it understood who was coming.
The space felt polished without being sterile. Expensive without being scared. Black without being reduced to a mood board somebody had stripped of blood and called sophisticated.
It was the kind of place where Black people could arrive dressed, beautiful, loud if they wanted to be, soft if they wanted to be, professional without shrinking, sensual without apologizing, and know the room could hold all of that.
The kind of event that told you money had been spent, but taste had made the final call.
And there she was.
Halfway across the rooftop, near the stretch of railing where the city made everybody look better than they probably deserved, talking to a woman with a press badge and good posture.
One hand wrapped around a glass, the other moving lightly through the point she was making.
Deep plum dress. Gold at her ears and wrist. Pixie laid smooth and glossy.
Her whole body moving with that calm, unhurried confidence that made it clear she knew the night was partly hers.
I stopped right there and let myself look.
The plum dress hugged her ass enough to keep a grown man clenching his jaw.
Her smile flashed once, bright and quick, and I felt something shift low in my chest that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the fact that this woman had somehow become part of what peace looked like for me.
That had happened faster than I expected.
Since the night at my place, things between us had stopped feeling like dates I was setting up and started feeling like a life slipping into place.
Dinner out one night. Movies on my couch another.
Her soft laugh in my kitchen. Me sweating out her pretty hair while she held on to my shoulders like I was exactly where she wanted to be.
Waking up and seeing her asleep beside me, mouth parted just enough to ruin a man’s discipline before seven in the morning.
The way her amber eyes looked when they opened and realized where she was.
And being inside her.
God.
That had become its own kind of trouble.
Talia was softness, wetness, and sublime pleasure wrapped around me so completely that there were times I forgot what kind of man I was supposed to be.
Careful. Controlled. Somebody with restraint.
Then she would open for me, take me deep, make one of those broken little sounds against my mouth, and all that discipline I liked to claim would start coming apart in my hands.
One night, I had been stroking her slow and deep, one hand braced beside her head, the other holding two fingers against her tongue so she could taste herself the way I had learned she liked.
Her eyes had closed on a gasp, lips soft around my fingers, body tight and wet under mine, and a fucking tear slipped out the corner of my eye before I could stop it.
One tear.
Like my body had needed somewhere to put what she was doing to me.
My mouth had gone slack around a sound I barely held back, toes damn near cramping from how hard I was fighting not to cum inside her.
And she had no idea. None. She was too gone under me, sucking my fingers, hips lifting, pussy pulling at me like she wanted everything I had been trying to keep out of her.
Shit, that woman had me fucked up.
Kendra had come by two days ago, talking about she was stealing her friend back for one evening and acting like I had joined a gang without knowing the rules.
Talia laughed so hard in my living room she had to grab the arm of the sofa, and ten minutes later, Kendra and I were standing in the kitchen talking like we had known each other longer than forty-five minutes.
That was how it had been with the people around her too.
Easy where it needed to be.
Real where it counted.
We barely posted in the group anymore. Not even on our own pages.
Twitter was mostly me talking sports and the occasional banking rant.
Talia still used Instagram more than I did, and every now and then, she’d throw up some little picture from dinner or a shot of her shoes beside mine at the front door, and the comments would fill with hearts, eyes, and flames.
Kendra would pop under it with some loud shit like, IKDR!!
And Talia would respond with hearts, kisses, anything that said she was happy without explaining who had helped put that smile on her face.
I’d look at the screen grinning anyway, because I liked seeing her like that. I liked knowing some of that light on her face had my fingerprints on it.
But that was also where it got complicated.
Part of me enjoyed the softness of it. The little signs.
The way we had something good enough for people to notice without handing them the whole thing.
Another part of me got tight every time the outside edged too close.
Too many eyes. Too much room for folks to start building stories around something I was still trying to hold right.
Both things lived in me at once.
I liked seeing her glow and I liked being the reason for it.
And the minute the world leaned in too hard, something in me wanted to pull her back where it was ours again.
Still, the deeper truth stayed the same.
I was happy with her.
Happy in a way that had stopped feeling casual a while ago. Happy enough that the old rules I used on lighter shit had started fitting wrong. Happy enough that somewhere in the last week, I had started thinking I might love her.
I hadn’t said it yet.
Hadn’t turned the thought over enough to trust my own mouth with it.
But it kept showing up anyway. In the quiet. In the mornings. In the way my body settled when she was near and got restless when she wasn’t.
Then she looked up and saw me.
Her whole face changed.
That did something to me every time, but this one hit different.
Maybe because this was her rooftop. Her event.
Her in full motion, sharp and beautiful with the skyline behind her, running the kind of night that asked something of her.
And still, when her eyes found mine, the shift came.
Her smile came all the way in, bright enough to make the rest of the rooftop lose focus for a second.
She said something to the journalist, then came toward me, weaving through clusters of people and high-top tables like the whole space knew to make room for her.
I met her halfway and caught her by the waist, pulling her into me before she got all the way there.
That first breath of her always got me. Perfume. Warm skin. Whatever lotion she used. Something floral and expensive under all that, something that was just hers, lifted a little by the rooftop breeze. I held her there for a second, felt the soft give of her against me, and let myself have it.
When she leaned back, I looked down into her eyes. They were alive all over again. Sparkling. Animated. Like seeing me had put an extra current in her.
“You made it,” she said.
I let my hands stay where they were. “You thought I was playing?”
Her mouth curved. “No. Seeing you is different.”
I looked at her for one more second, then past her shoulder at the rooftop bar and the glass in her hand.
“You got water?”
Her brows lifted. “You said hello already.”
“I’m serious.”
“I have a French 75.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
One of the things about Talia was that she got so busy she forgot to hydrate. The irony was Molly felt the same way about me eating lunch.