Chapter 16
Avery
Sunday morning came soft and slow, sunlight spilling through the loft’s tall windows. Avery woke to the feeling of warmth pressed along her back, Quinn’s arm draped over her waist, the faint weight of her breath against her neck.
For a long moment, she just stayed there, eyes closed, pretending time had stopped. The city was quiet in that rare Sunday way, distant hum, no urgency, just the low rhythm of life outside.
Quinn stirred behind her, kissed her shoulder, and whispered, “Morning.”
“Morning,” Avery murmured, turning in her arms. Quinn’s hair was tousled, her eyes still heavy with sleep. She looked softer like this, stripped of her edges. Human. And Avery felt a possessive warmth she didn’t try to analyze.
They kissed, more affection than need at first, but then Avery shifted, brushing her thigh against Quinn’s hip, and the mood changed in an instant. Quinn smiled against her lips, that small, knowing smile that always unraveled her.
“Again?” Quinn teased, voice still rough.
Avery grinned, sliding her hand under Quinn’s shirt. “You have a flight tonight. I’m getting my time’s worth.”
Quinn laughed quietly but didn’t argue.
What followed was slower than the night before, less hungry, more deliberate. The kind of sex that blurred into morning light and soft breaths. When they finally collapsed back against the sheets, Avery’s chest pressed to Quinn’s, neither moved for a while.
Eventually, Avery rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling.
That familiar dread curled in her stomach—that Sunday feeling she’d had as a kid, when the weekend was almost over and Monday loomed like a shadow.
Only now it wasn’t school. It was Quinn getting on a plane and disappearing across the country.
She sighed. “You have to leave tonight.”
“I do,” Quinn said quietly, brushing a strand of hair from Avery’s face. “But not yet.”
Avery nodded, swallowing that ache. “You hungry?”
“Always,” Quinn said, smiling softly.
They got dressed, Avery in jeans and a loose sweater, Quinn pulling on a crisp black shirt and dark denim from the overnight bag she’d grabbed from her hotel room the day before.
They looked like opposites again. Casual and polished but when Quinn reached for her hand as they walked down the block, it didn’t feel mismatched at all.
They returned to the café around the corner from Avery’s apartment. The door opened, and the familiar scent of espresso and sugar surrounded them. They took a table by the window, two steaming coffees between them, and plates of pancakes and eggs they barely touched.
For a while, they just sat there, holding hands across the table.
Then Quinn said, “Tell me about Lilith.”
Avery blinked. “You want me to tell you about my company?”
Quinn nodded. “Yeah, I know I’ve done the research and seen the stats. But I want to hear from you. Why you built it, what it means to you.”
Avery hesitated, caught off guard but not in a bad way. She leaned back, fingers tracing the edge of her mug. “I built it because dating for queer women sucked.”
Quinn’s mouth curved, amused. “That’s honest.”
“It’s true,” Avery said with a shrug. “I’d been on all the apps. None of them felt right. Even the ones that claimed to be inclusive weren’t built for us, not really. They didn’t understand our dynamics, our humor, our chaos.”
“Messiness?” Quinn echoed, smiling.
Avery smiled back. “Yeah, the beautiful kind. The kind that makes us who we are. So, I started designing something I’d actually want to use, something made for us, by us.
I had a pretty serious girlfriend at the time, but I still wanted to create a space where people could show up however they are and feel seen. ”
Quinn tilted her head. “And the coding?”
“That was me,” Avery said, taking a sip of coffee. “At least at the start. I built the bones of it in my apartment one summer. Six monitors. Cold brew. Saltines. Gabby thought I’d lost my mind.”
“I would’ve believed it,” Quinn said, grinning.
“I did lose my relationship because of it.” Avery looked down at her hands.
“Because you were busy?” Quinn asked.
“Yes, and she started seeing someone else, a nineteen-year-old, who she left me for.”
Quinn shook her head, “Well, that’s on her. And also, I’m sorry that happened.”
Avery smiled softly and nodded her head, “Now it’s bigger than I ever expected,” she went on. “The messages we get from users, people finding love, community, themselves. It’s wild.”
Quinn looked at her like she was memorizing her. “You’re brilliant,” she said, simple and sure. No flattery. Just truth.
Avery’s throat went a little tight. “Thank you.”
They sat in the quiet for a moment, the sound of dishes clinking and low music filling the space between them.
Then Avery asked, “Why do you want to acquire Lilith?”
Quinn didn’t look surprised, just thoughtful. She set down her coffee. “I didn’t think you wanted to talk about that with me.”
“I didn’t,” Avery admitted. “But it’s Sunday. You’re leaving. Feels like if we don’t talk about it now, we’ll just keep avoiding it.”
Quinn nodded slowly. “Fair.”
She leaned back, eyes steady on Avery. “I want to acquire Lilith because it’s brilliant. Because it’s the only platform that actually understands its users. You built something real, not just marketable, but meaningful. I don’t want to take that. I want to protect it.”
Avery frowned slightly. “You want to buy it so you can protect it?”
“Something like that,” Quinn said, a small, soft smile forming. “At Halo, we have the infrastructure, the reach, the money, but not the heart. Lilith has that. You have that. I can’t manufacture authenticity. But I can support it.”
Avery looked down at their hands, thumb brushing across Quinn’s knuckles. “And for you? What does it do for Halo?”
“It gives us heart,” Quinn said simply. “And from a business standpoint? It’s smart. Your users are loyal. Passionate. We’d be stupid not to want to be part of that. But I’m not interested in taking it from you, Avery.”
Avery looked up. “No?”
“No,” Quinn said. “I came into this wanting you to stay on. But now that I know you—and I understand the business better—I don’t just want you involved.
I need you involved. I wouldn’t want to do this without you.
With your control. Your vision. I don’t want to dilute what you’ve built. I want to help you make it bigger.”
Avery studied her for a long moment. “You rehearsed that?”
Quinn’s lips twitched. “A little” She teased, “But the part about you staying on? That’s new. That’s from this weekend.”
Avery smiled faintly, looking at her over the rim of her coffee cup. “You’re dangerous when you’re honest.”
“I’m always honest,” Quinn said. “Just not always… open.”
Avery’s chest tightened again, that same ache that had followed her all morning. “I don’t know if I can let go of any of it,” she said quietly. “Even a little.”
“I don’t expect you to,” Quinn said. “I want you to know I don’t think I need to own what you made anymore. Maybe we need to look at it from another point of view.”
“Like what?” Avery asked.
“Like maybe we do some sort of merger.” She shrugged, “I can think of something—I just want to stand beside it. Beside you.”
That landed. Avery didn’t say anything for a moment, she just watched her, feeling everything, she couldn’t yet name.
“Okay,” she said finally.
Quinn tilted her head. “Okay?”
“I’ll keep listening,” Avery said. “We’ll see where it goes.”
Quinn smiled then—not the polished, press-ready kind, but the small, warm one that Avery had started to fall for. “That’s all I wanted.”
The server dropped the check on the table, and neither of them reached for it right away.
Avery looked at Quinn’s hand, still linked with hers, and thought that maybe she was already in trouble.
* * *
They’d been back long enough for the buzz of brunch to fade, for the city noise outside to settle into its usual hum while they stayed exactly where they were.
The loft had slipped into that kind of quiet that comes when you’re both pretending time isn’t running out.
The light outside had shifted, more honey than gold now, stretching across the couch where they sat tangled under a blanket.
Henrietta was curled in her usual corner, half-watching them with her judgmental little face, like she couldn’t believe she was being ignored.
Avery had pulled Quinn in close after they got home, both of them too full and too content to do anything but collapse into the couch.
Now, Quinn was tracing light circles on the inside of Avery’s wrist, both of them half-watching the episode of Killing Eve on the TV, half-ignoring it.
“Your flight’s at what time?” Avery asked quietly.
“Six-thirty,” Quinn said, voice just above a murmur.
Avery nodded, her chest tightening. “So, we have a few hours.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said softly, as though the quiet might hold the moment in place.
For a while, they didn’t move, and Avery stayed tucked against Quinn’s side, listening to the steady rhythm of Quinn’s thumb brushing against her skin.
The soft hum of the city drifted in through the windows, and Henrietta let out a faint snore from her corner of the couch.
Avery let out a quiet breath and thought she wanted to freeze this version of the day, the one where everything felt easy and still.
Eventually, Quinn shifted beneath her, sitting up a little and brushing her hand down Avery’s arm. “You okay?” she asked gently.
Avery smiled faintly and tilted her head back to look at her. “You ever get that Sunday feeling?” she asked. “Like when you were a kid, and the weekend was almost over, and you could already feel Monday coming?”
Quinn’s mouth twitched at the corner as she looked down at her. “Yeah,” she said. “I used to hate it.”
“That’s how I feel right now,” Avery admitted, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of the blanket.