53. With Me
With Me
Kiri
The bedroom door opens and I’m on her before either of us says a word.
Natalia rushes into me at the same time, arms locking around my neck as I kiss her.
I lift her off the floor and spin her once, twice, unable to stop myself.
It was thirty minutes at most, but shut away in that room listening to her decide whether to protect me, it felt like hours. She laughs into my mouth.
“It’s over,” she says between kisses. “You’ll be okay. We can get back to more of this.”
Her fingers slide beneath the collar of my badly buttoned shirt.
“Which is good, because you have on way too many clothes for a man who’s about to be back in my bed.”
I stop. The laughter falls out of her face as I set her down. My hands settle around her upper arms.
“Nat, you can’t sign that shit.”
Her brows draw together.
“Julian deserves to be punished. He deserves whatever comes after people find out what he’s been doing.”
She shakes her head.
“I’m not putting all of this out there so strangers can dissect every choice you made. I’m not watching you lose everything in some stupidly long legal battle because you punched an asshole who deserved it.”
I cup her face.
“But what if I hadn’t been there?”
She stills.
“What if I hadn’t heard what he had planned? What if there hadn’t been someone close enough who…” My voice catches on the truth. “Who cares about you?”
Natalia looks up at me without flinching.
“But you were there.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“It is to me.”
She takes my hands from her face and holds them between us.
“It didn’t happen, Kiri. Because you were there.”
Her grip tightens.
“This is what I want. I want to be with you. I don’t want you dragged through court, ripped apart in public, having to defend your entire fucking life because you protected me.”
“Nat—”
“No. Listen to me. I want this. Us.” Her eyes begin to shine, but her voice stays steady. “I don’t want to lose it the second we finally have it.”
The words go straight through me.
“If I fight Julian, he gets more of me. More of you. More of us. He gets years of our lives, and every headline, every interview, every stranger deciding what I should’ve done differently. What I must've said or worn to encourage him. They'll rip us both apart.”
She presses my hands against her chest.
“Please. I know what I want. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
I stare at her. Every instinct in me wants to argue. To tell her justice matters, that she shouldn’t have to swallow what he did all because I lost control. But this is her choice, not mine.
Finally, I nod.
Then I pull her against me and kiss the top of her head.
“You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, Kroppy.”
She laughs into my chest. My arms tighten around her.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
We spend the entire day finding out how many surfaces one penthouse can offer. The answer is too many. Or not enough.
The bed first, because neither of us has the energy to pretend we’re going anywhere else. Then the shower again, but the second one, because the penthouse has two and Natalia insists that makes it a scientific obligation.
We don't bother with clothes for the rest of the day.
We wear robes when we have to move through the suite, though even that starts to feel like a waste of time.
At some point, hunger finally forces us into the living room.
We drag a throw from the back of the couch and spread it across the floor beneath the windows, then empty the complimentary basket between us like two people hiding from civilization.
More crackers and chocolate. Fancy dried fruit. Tiny jars of things neither of us can pronounce. Natalia finds the caviar and eyes it suspiciously.
“You’ve never had it?”
“No.”
“Try it.”
She puts the smallest amount possible onto a cracker and takes a bite. Her face changes instantly. I start laughing before she even swallows.
“It tastes like judging people in a lower tax bracket.”
I nearly choke on my drink. She reaches for another cracker to scrape the rest from her tongue.
“People pay for this?”
“A lot.”
“That makes it taste even worse.”
She pushes the jar toward me like I have the power to erase if from existence for upsetting her.
I kind of like that. We lie there in our robes with the city spread beneath us, eating whatever Stefan sent up as apology, hush money, or both.
For a while, it feels almost normal. Then Natalia crawls across the blanket for the chocolate.
Her robe slips off one shoulder. I forget what normal is.
The picnic ends exactly the way everything else does today. On the floor first, then the couch. Then halfway to the kitchen because she says she needs water and I follow her like I haven’t seen her naked in at least twelve minutes. She reaches the island right as I reach her.
We decide, with very little discussion and no useful judgment, that the kitchen island is the best place in the entire penthouse. We test the theory more than once.
By evening, every room looks slightly lived through.
Sheets twisted and robes eventually completely abandoned.
Glasses left wherever we stopped caring.A throw blanket ruined beneath the remains of our picnic.
The penthouse no longer looks like some immaculate luxury suite designed for people with assistants and private jets.
It looks like us.
Messy, excessive and completely out of control.
When we finally collapse into the last clean bed, both of us are wrecked.
Sore. Marked. Scratched. Bitten.
Natalia left lines across my back and crescents along my shoulders. I left evidence of my mouth against her skin in places she’ll have to cover tomorrow.
Tomorrow. The word feels different now. She leaves tomorrow.
I have to be back in the studio here in Los Angeles.
Seattle is at least a month away. The whole day has felt suspended outside reality, but lying here with her asleep against me, there’s nowhere left for the truth to hide.
Her breathing has gone slow and even, one hand resting over my waist. Her hair spills across my chest, catching gold in the faint light coming through the curtains.
I run my fingers through it.
The fire inside me still hasn’t gone out. It's only changed shape. Still hungry but now there's more ache, more fear. I look down at her and hate the thought of waking up tomorrow without her here.
Hate the airport. The distance. The month waiting between this and whatever comes next.
She moves in her sleep and my arm draws her closer. The words leave me so quietly I’m not sure I even mean to say them aloud.
“You could just stay here.” I press my mouth to her hair. “With me.”