Chapter Nineteen
Sophia
For a second, I don’t know what I’m lying on—only that it’s warm and solid and smells like soap and cedar and something that feels like safety.
Then my brain catches up—chest, not pillow; arm, not blanket; breath slow and steady under my ear.
Flavius.
Last night comes back in a rush. His hands. My hands. His mouth on my breast, the way my whole body arched into him, the way we both could have kept going…
And the way we didn’t.
We stopped. Together. Not because we didn’t want more, but because we wanted it to be a choice, not an escape hatch.
Heat curls low in my stomach at the memory, but it’s threaded through with something softer. Rightness. Not the frantic grasping of my panic spiral yesterday, but something grounded.
“Good morning,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
I realize I’m still sprawled half on top of him, my cheek over his heart, one bare leg tangled with his.
The T-shirt I pulled on before sleep has ridden up to my ribs, exposing a strip of skin along my waist. His shirt is twisted halfway up his chest, my hand still fisted in the fabric, but it feels intimate all the same.
My brain does a small, panicked stutter.
“Hi,” I manage, then push myself up, pulling the quilt higher. I’m acutely aware that I’m braless under this thin T-shirt, and the cool morning air makes that fact rather obvious.
He doesn’t grab or leer or make it weird. He just watches me with that soft, intent gaze, as if he’s cataloging every micro-expression for later.
“No need to be sorry for anything,” he says quietly, as if he can already sense the apology forming. “Not for last night. Not for wanting clothes now.”
I tug the shirt down properly and step into clean jeans, grateful to have my body back under my own control. The cool denim helps re-orient me in my own skin. By the time I turn back, he’s sitting up in bed, the sheet riding low over his hips, red hair sexily mussed, green eyes steady.
Good Lord.
He’s objectively ridiculous—like some artist mashed together every “dangerous and gorgeous” archetype and then accidentally added “soft” as a final layer.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I do a quick internal scan. Yesterday was a mess—vomiting in the bathroom, Blackwell’s paper, my mother’s gaslighting, the frantic dash to the conference room, the whiteboard, the walk, the way my whole world felt like it was cracking down the middle.
This morning… doesn’t.
“I’m… okay,” I say slowly. “I don’t regret any of it. Last night, I mean.” I swallow. “Do you?”
Something fierce and tender gathers in his eyes.
“No,” he says, with that simple honesty that always disarms me. “I do not regret touching you. Or stopping with you.” A small smile curves his mouth. “I will think about your sounds for a long time, though.”
Heat slams into my face. “Flavius.”
“What?” he says, not remotely sorry. “You were beautiful.”
I make a strangled noise and retreat to the tiny kitchenette, because that is as far as I can go in this one-room cabin without leaving it entirely.
My laptop is still on the table, closed but looming. The memory of Blackwell’s paper—the way my stomach dropped, the way the framework of my work was written under her name—presses at the edges of my mind.
Reality reasserts itself.
“I can make tea,” he says, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing.
He doesn’t reach for his shirt. I catch a flicker of internal debate in his face—like he’s wondering if he should—but then he leaves it.
There’s something oddly reassuring about that.
Not performance-reassuring. Just… him, comfortable in his own skin, trusting me to say something if it’s too much.
“Tea is good,” I say.
He moves around my kitchenette easily. Kettle, mugs, finding the tea without asking. It’s domestic and gentle and almost enough to make me forget why I texted him yesterday with shaking hands.
Almost.
I open my laptop.
The paper is still in my browser history. It would take one click to put it back on the screen, to let the wound gape open again.
Instead, I open the folder with the photos we took of the whiteboard. Our timeline. Our proof.
Date after date. Arrows. Phrases. The evolution of the work as it actually happened.
My framework. My becoming.
I stare at the pictures, at the messy red circles and cramped notes, at the map of my own mind laid out in dry-erase marker.
“What do you see?” he asks quietly, setting a steaming mug by my elbow.
He doesn’t look at the screen first. He looks at my face.
“I see…” My throat tightens. “I see that I didn’t imagine any of it. That the idea lived here first. With us. With the men. With this place.” I swallow hard. “That she reached in and took it.”
I let myself feel it fully this time—not just the shock and nausea, but the violation. The theft. The utter dismissal of my labor.
And beneath it, something else.
Anger.
Not the wild, uncontained kind that sent me spiraling yesterday. This is cleaner. Sharper. Like a blade honed overnight into something precise.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
He’s close enough that I smell him over the jasmine tea.
Over the soap and sweat of last night, he smells like warm sleep.
It could be dangerously addictive. He’s close enough that I can feel tension thrumming under his control—like every part of him wants to do something, fix something, fight someone, and he’s holding it back with all his might.
“I’m thinking,” I say slowly. “This is a turning point between before and after.” The words come faster now, my brain finally catching up with what my gut decided somewhere between sleep and waking on his chest. “Before, I let people tell me my perceptions were wrong. That I was overreacting. That my autism made me misunderstand things. That keeping peace mattered more than being right.” A dry laugh escapes me.
“That’s how my parents trained me to move through the world.
Don’t make trouble. Don’t be difficult. Be grateful for what you get. ”
He doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t rush in with platitudes. He just sits closer, posture loose, eyes locked on mine.
“After,” I say, and my voice steadies, “is this. Me saying no. My work matters. My perception matters. I was there when this framework came alive. I did the labor. I built this with the men, not in some office three states away.” My hands curl into fists on the tabletop.
“She doesn’t get to steal that and call it collaboration. ”
The decision crystallizes even as I say it. I hear the finality in my own voice.
“I’m going to file a formal complaint,” I say. “Not just an angry email. A real, documented ethics complaint. With dates. With evidence. With your testimony, if you agree to it.”
Something flickers over his face—pride and fear and perhaps a small amount of grief for the ease I’m giving up.
He exhales. “You are sure.”
It’s not a challenge. It’s a check-in.
I check my head and my gut.
“Yes,” I say. “I am.”
He nods once. The movement is small, but it feels seismic. “Then I stand beside you.”
Not in front. Not behind. Beside.
“I…” He stops. Tries again. “Every part of me wants to pull you out of harm. Take you away from people who would hurt you. But that is what I want, not what you choose.” His mouth twists. “I am learning what I want is not same as what you need.”
It hits me in the chest.
He could make this about himself so easily. About his need to protect, about his arena ghosts. Instead, he’s naming the tension without acting on it.
“You’re doing a good job letting me make my own decisions,” I say softly.
He breathes out a soft almost-laugh. “I feel like I am doing nothing.”
“You’re not.” My throat tightens. “You’re listening. You’re believing me. You’re not telling me I’m overreacting. That is… not nothing.”
He goes still, then says, very quietly, “Then I will keep doing that.”
I swallow past the burn in my eyes and turn back to the laptop before I crawl into his lap and cry on his bare chest.
New document.
Title line blinking.
I type:
FORMAL RESEARCH ETHICS COMPLAINT – DRAFT
Just seeing the words on the screen makes my heart pound. It feels bigger than an academic document. It feels like engraving something into myself.
“I’m not submitting it yet,” I say, not really to him, more to the room. “I need to draft, gather everything, and consult policies so I don’t give them easy loopholes. But I need to start.”
“Start is important,” he says.
I list bullet points. Minimal words, just anchors. I don’t need full sentences yet, just the skeleton.
Evidence of independent framework development (notes, timestamps)
Grant proposal (January) – original scaffolding
On-site evolution at Second Chance (June onward)
Meeting dates with Blackwell (advisory sessions)
Electronic correspondence
Blackwell’s paper submission & revision dates (March–May)
Language overlap (phrasing, structure, trajectory)
Primary source testimony (Flavius – eidetic memory recall)
My fingers hover over the last bullet for a moment, then I resume typing. Outline, not full sentences. I’ll need to dig up the actual policy language later, but for now the skeleton is enough.
When my hands start to shake, I stop.
He notices immediately. “Breathe,” he says softly.
I do. In for four, hold for four, out for six. The pattern he taught me.
The kettle whistles again. He pours more hot water, adds a slice of lemon without asking. The domesticity of it is almost absurd against the backdrop of what I’m drafting, but it helps.
He looks up when I go quiet for too long.
“I have to deal with Blackwell,” I say, rubbing my temple.
“What do you want to say?” he asks gently.
Not what’s safest. Not what keeps the peace. What do I actually want?
I picture the sanctuary—the conversations, the work taking shape in real time, the men who’ve trusted me with their stories. The version of myself that feels most true here.