CHAPTER FOUR
WE SPREAD EVERYTHING across the glass coffee table: glossy orange chicken lacquered in its own sauce, pork dumplings slick with chili oil, Kung Pao with extra peanuts, salt and pepper shrimp still crackling from the fryer, sweet and sour chicken with an extra container of sauce on the side for Toya, and enough rice to feed considerably more than three people.
"You know there are only three of us, right?" I asked Ethan.
He looked at the spread, taking it in with the calm satisfaction of a man who had done exactly what he intended. "Leftovers."
"That's your defense?"
"It's a strong one."
I wrinkled my nose. Chinese food never tasted good to me re-heated. Toya on the other hand made a noise of agreement around the dumpling she'd already shoved into her mouth, cheek pushed out with it.
She had woken shortly after we got back and made herself human—hair re-pinned, face washed—still in her clothes from the night before as she’d been passed out, and he wasn’t going to change her without consent.
The three of us ate with chopsticks, passing cartons back and forth, Toya reaching across me twice without asking.
The salt and pepper shrimp disappeared first. Outside, the city made its usual noise, and in here we made ours—Toya's laugh bouncing off the high ceilings, Ethan's quieter and more deliberate, mine somewhere in between.
She interrogated him about where he'd taken me all day, leaning forward with her elbows on the glass and her chopsticks pointed at him like a prosecutor. He gave her just enough. At some point she looked between us and shook her head, the crooked grin spreading slow.
"Y'all look like the poster for one of those moody-ass romance films. It's weird."
"Please eat your food."
"I'm just saying." The chopsticks swung between us. "It's been one day."
I narrowed my eyes at her. She smiled sweetly and reached over and took one of my dumplings off my plate.
A bottle of wine appeared on the table, and then a glass was poured for Toya, for Ethan, and then something else was set in front of me—sparkling, with ice, without my asking.
I was starting to notice a lot of things about him.
Eventually, Toya polished off the last of the sweet and sour chicken directly from the carton and announced she was calling a car, turning down Ethan's offer to crash in the guest room again with a wave of her chopstick.
"I have a home," she informed him.
"You had one this morning too."
"Sure did, and don’t forget I know where you live so don’t try anything slick with my girl.”
He laughed as she hugged me before leaving, her braids tickling my cheek, lingering just long enough to murmur, "Make good choices," into my ear.
I pulled back and stared at her. She grinned and added a little louder. “Or interesting ones."
"Goodbye, Latoya."
Her cackle followed her all the way to the elevator, and then the doors swallowed it whole. The penthouse went quiet, but not in a awkward way.
The city still burned amber and white beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, almost decorative. I reached for the fresh the sparkling water he'd set in front of me and curled into the far end of the sofa, tucking one leg beneath me. The leather was warm from where we'd been sitting all evening.
Being alone with him again didn't make me nervous.
That was the part making me nervous.
I knew more about him now than I had that morning.
I knew he'd become a lawyer because of something that had happened to someone he loved, and that he'd never quite said it that plainly, but I'd heard it anyway.
I knew about his chosen brothers, his sister, his parents—his mother's cooking, his father's handshake.
I knew what he read on planes, what he ordered when he wasn't trying to impress anyone, and that he held deeply offensive opinions about pineapple.
He knew about my music. My friends. My family. He knew exactly whose daughter he'd brought home and hadn't so much as blinked.
Maybe that was why this felt so easy. Or maybe easy was precisely what I should've been worried about.
"I shouldn't say this," I admitted, turning the cold glass between my palms, "but I feel... comfortable around you. Maybe too comfortable."
He leaned back against the opposite armrest, sleeves pushed to his forearms, the ink there catching the low light as he settled in. His dark eyes found mine across the length of the sofa.
"That's not a bad thing, Julia."
"It kinda feels like one." I smiled faintly, trying to shrug off the admission. "I know this is cliché, but I don't normally do this."
"Do what?"
I gestured at the half-cleared coffee table, the city behind him, the whole evening. "Any of this. Meet some man in a club, wake up at his place, spend the entire next day with him like I've known him longer than twenty-four hours."
His mouth curved, slow and sure. "Good."
I narrowed my eyes. "Good?"
"I'd like to think there's something different about me."
I laughed softly. "That was confident."
"Accurate."
"Debatable,” I argued.
"You're still here."
Well. He had me there. I looked down at the water bottle in my hands, fighting the smile threatening my mouth. "You really are a lawyer."
"I warned you."
When I looked at him again, something had shifted. Or maybe I'd simply stopped pretending I hadn't felt it shifting all day. His gaze dropped to my mouth for the briefest second before returning to my eyes.
He slowly reached out and gently took my water from my hands, and then set it down.
There was nothing hurried about it. He moved slowly, deliberately, giving me every opportunity to pull away as he closed the distance between us.
He moved closer.
One smooth, unhurried shift across the leather, closing the distance between with the kind of deliberation that left every door wide open.
I could feel the heat of him before he even reached me—the warmth radiating off his body in the cool air of the penthouse, the faint cedar-and-something-darker scent of his skin cutting through the lingering sweetness of sweet and sour sauce and candle wax.
He gave me every opportunity to pull away.
The pause was long enough to count, one breath, two—his dark eyes steady on mine, waiting.
I didn't move. His hand came up, fingers brushing the curve of my jaw with a touch so light it was almost imagined.
The pad of his thumb traced the line of my cheekbone, and I felt the callus there—rough, unexpected—against my skin.
"I've been wanting to do this all day," he confessed, his voice low and rough at the edges.
My breath caught in a way that was almost painful. I could see every detail of him this close—the shadow of stubble along his jaw, the dark sweep of his lashes. His thumb paused at the corner of my mouth, and I felt myself lean into the pressure without deciding to.
"All day?" I managed.
"Since you woke in my bedroom wearing my shirt." The corner of his mouth lifted. "Since before that, if I'm being honest."
"When are you ever honest?" I teased.
His laugh was barely more than a breath against my lips. "With you? Apparently more than I should be."
The distance between them was nothing now.
I could feel his heartbeat—or maybe it was mine, the two rhythms tangling together until I couldn't tell which was which.
His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers threading into the long copper strands of my hair, and the touch sent something electric down the length of my spine.
"I'm going to kiss you now," he warned, and it wasn't a question.
"Okay," I whispered.
He closed the last inch between them, and his mouth found mine with a precision that made me forget every other kiss I’d ever had.
The first contact was soft—testing, almost—his lips warm and soft.
Then his hand tightened in my hair, angling my head just slightly, and the kiss deepened into something that tasted like whiskey and want.
It felt inevitable.
Not because I'd known him long enough for anything about us to make sense.
I hadn't. But somewhere between learning he knew exactly whose daughter he'd brought home, arguing over books, laughing over pineapple, and watching him remember to order Toya's dinner, the day had been quietly tilting us toward this moment.
So when Ethan kissed me, I kissed him back.
That was all it took.
One ordinary day that hadn't been ordinary at all.
One man I hadn't planned on meeting.
And one kiss I didn't stop.
my hand found the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric to pull him closer. His settled at my waist, thumb pressing into the dip above my hip bone through the borrowed cotton of his shirt.
The city kept burning beyond the windows, indifferent to whatever was happening on this sofa, on this floor, in this room. The ice in my forgotten glass shifted with a quiet clink that neither of us heard.
My hands found his shoulders and I pushed, hard enough that he fell back against the armrest, the leather creaking beneath him. His eyes widened—just a fraction—before I moved. I swung my leg over him, knees sinking into the sofa on either side of his hips, and settled my weight onto his lap.
The sound he made was low and rough, almost a groan, and his hands found my waist immediately, fingers digging into the cotton with a grip that felt like it could leave marks.
"Julia."
I didn't answer. I kissed him instead—harder than he'd kissed me, my hands framing his jaw, my thumbs pressing into the stubble along his cheeks. His mouth opened under mine and I took it, took everything he was offering, and asked for more.
His hand slid from my waist and found bare skin beneath the hem of his own shirt—the one I was still wearing—and the touch of his palm against my lower back was so hot it felt like a brand. I arched into it, a gasp escaping against his mouth that he swallowed whole.