Chapter 14 #2
I pulled my coat tighter as I walked through the terminal, my carry-on rolling behind me like an obedient shadow. Sunglasses on, even though it was cloudy. It wasn’t about the light. It was about hiding the fact that I still felt him.
Not in some poetic, romantic way. In the very real way my body reminded me with every step. That slow, deep ache between my thighs. The tenderness in my hips. The faint bruises that bloomed under my skin like secrets.
Three rounds.
I hated myself a little for how my mind kept replaying it in flashes—his mouth at my throat, his hand steady on my neck, that rasp of his voice when he whispered like he was worshipping life itself. You’re alive. You’re safe.
I swallowed, jaw tightening. Compartmentalize. File. Lock it down.
By the time I got to the rideshare pickup zone, I could almost pretend it had been a dream. A strange, reckless detour that had nothing to do with the woman I was here.
The woman with a career and a security clearance level for a job that chewed people up and spit them out daily. The woman who didn’t get to fall apart because she slept with an old ghost and liked it too much.
The driver asked if I was heading home. I gave him my address and stared out the window at the passing gray skyline, the monuments half-hidden behind scaffolding and low clouds. DC always looked like it was under construction.
So was I, I guess.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket halfway across the bridge.
I didn’t need to look to know. Somehow my instincts told me who it was without looking. But I looked anyway—because I was still me, still curious, still incapable of fully committing to denial.
Unknown number from North Carolina.
My throat tightened.
I stared at the screen until it stopped ringing.
Then I slid the phone back into my pocket like it was nothing. Like I hadn’t just felt my pulse spike at the sight of it. Why he blocked his number, I didn’t know. But for years any time he reached out, the phone number always came up blocked or unknown.
The driver chatted about traffic. About how the city never slept. I nodded at the right times, smiled when appropriate. I did what I always did—performed normalcy like it was muscle memory.
My building came into view. The driver stopped, I exited, grabbed my bags, and began the way up to my place. When I finally stepped into my apartment, the quiet hit hard.
Not the peaceful kind.
The empty kind.
I dropped my bags by the door, kicked off my shoes, and stood there for a long second staring at my living room. Everything exactly where I left it. Clean. Orderly. Controlled.
My life.
I had built it with both hands. Brick by brick after grief had tried to bury me. After people I loved had been taken from this world too soon and I learned the lesson the universe kept drilling into my bones—no one gets to stay.
I went straight to my bedroom and stripped out of travel clothes, tossing them into the hamper. My robe from the hotel was still folded in my suitcase, and the sight of it made my chest twist. I slammed the suitcase shut. I could unpack tomorrow.
Shower. Hot water. Scrub North Carolina off my skin.
Except I couldn’t scrub him off.
My mind betrayed me the second I stepped under the spray, heat warming its way down my shoulders. My body relaxed, and with it came memories like they had been waiting behind a door.
His weight. His mouth. The way he’d looked at me in the morning, like he wanted to say a thousand things and didn’t trust himself not to share too much.
I pressed my palm against the tile wall, eyes squeezed shut. Don’t go there Nita, I told myself.
I wasn’t twenty-five. I wasn’t naive. I wasn’t interested in a romance that ran on chaos and impulse.
One night. One detour. It was done.
When I got out, I checked my phone. Three missed calls.
All North Carolina.
A text from him, this time the number was not concealed.
Dante: You made it?
I stared at the message until the letters blurred. My thumb hovered over the keyboard.
A simple yes would be harmless. That was the lie my brain offered.
Because nothing with Dante was harmless. Not now. Not ever. Not when he kissed me like he had been waiting years for permission to breathe again.
I set the phone face down on the counter.
My reflection in the mirror looked too awake. Eyes too bright. Mouth too full like it had been kissed into remembering what it could feel.
I leaned closer and whispered, “Get it together,” like I was talking to a suspect.
Then I went to work. Not physically—my next shift wasn’t until tomorrow—but mentally. I opened my laptop, checked emails, flagged the urgent ones, answered two that couldn’t wait. I pulled up the briefing folder I had been ignoring all week because North Carolina had hijacked my brain.
By the time evening settled, I had almost managed to push him back into the compartment I had built for him.
Almost.
My phone rang again as I reheated leftovers.
I didn’t check the screen this time. I knew. My body knew. My heartbeat told me before my brain could pretend otherwise.
It rang until voicemail.
Then it rang again ten minutes later.
And again.
I ate standing at the counter, chewing without tasting, eyes fixed on the microwave clock like it was the only thing keeping me anchored. I wasn’t ignoring him because I didn’t want to answer.
That was the part that scared me.
I was ignoring him because I did want to answer. I craved this simple connection to him. Because one conversation would turn into two. Because two would turn into late-night calls. Because Dante didn’t do anything halfway, and neither did I when I stopped pretending.
And I refused to let my life become a waiting room. I had done enough waiting in my lifetime.
Waiting for justice that didn’t come fast enough. Waiting for men to be who they promised they could be. Waiting for the next shoe to drop.
I wasn’t waiting anymore.
My phone buzzed on the counter. A new text.
Dante: Nita. Don’t do this.
I exhaled slowly, heat rising in my chest. My mind ran amuck with different thoughts. Don’t do what? Protect myself? Keep my boundaries? Refuse to let you rewrite the rules because you’re lonely and I’m convenient?
I stared at the message and felt that familiar tug, anger braided with something softer. Something dangerous. Something that felt really like care.
My fingers typed before I fully committed to the choice.
Then I deleted the words. Typed again.
Deleted again. Because anything I said would invite more.
And the truth was simple, even if it wasn’t easy. I didn’t want the complications of a relationship.
Not with him. Not with anyone who could make one night feel like a life-altering event.
I rinsed my plate and put it in the dishwasher with unnecessary force. Then I picked up my phone, opened his contact—yes, I still had it saved—and hovered over the block button.
My thumb didn’t press. I couldn’t do it. Blocking him would be an act of war. A declaration. And I didn’t want war. I wanted distance.
So I did the thing I was best at. I put him in a box and taped it shut. I left the phone on silent.
I turned on a show I didn’t care about. I answered a work call and slipped back into the version of me that never trembled.
And later, when I crawled into bed in my own apartment with my own sheets and my own quiet, I stared at the ceiling and listened to the city hum outside my window.
My phone buzzed once more on the nightstand.
I didn’t pick it up.
Not because I didn’t want him.
Because I did.
And wanting him was exactly the kind of complication that could ruin everything I had fought to build.