28. Sage
TWENTY-EIGHT
SAGE
Knox is waiting outside when I push through the diner door at close, leaning against the building like he’s been there for hours.
He looks at me. I melt.
“Hey, you,” I say, stopping in front of him and craning my neck to look up at him.
Whatever he sees on my face makes his eyes darken. He takes my bag off my shoulder before I can argue, slings it over his own, and falls into step beside me without a word.
We move through the evening crowd, his bulk parting the foot traffic like a ship’s prow, and I study him sideways. The hard line of his jaw. The way his eyes never stop moving, cataloging threats I can’t see. The sheer size of him—he makes everyone else on the sidewalk look like children.
We walk in silence for a while, like neither of us wants to be the first to poke at it. Because there’s an it now. Ever since yesterday. When he put his hand under my skirt in the alley behind the diner and gave me one of the most intense orgasms of my life.
And licked his fingers clean like he wanted me to watch exactly what I’d done to him.
My pulse kicks at the memory. Hard.
Knox glances down at me. “You’re quiet.”
“So are you.”
A rough sound leaves him—not quite a laugh, but close. “Thought you liked that.”
“I do.” I shove my hands in my jacket pockets. “Usually. Right now I’m trying to figure out if I should be embarrassed.”
“What for?”
Some people stare at him as we pass. It makes me proud in a way I can’t justify. I want to grab his arm and claim him on the open street just to see who’d dare look twice. I don’t. But I walk close enough to brush his sleeve, and every time I do, I swear he slows a little to keep me there.
“Yesterday.” I keep my eyes forward.
He doesn’t answer right away.
We pass a couple arguing outside a taco place, a woman in heels laughing too loudly into her phone, a guy on a bike who swerves when he clocks Knox and thinks better of mouthing off about it.
Hunter Harbor at night is all salt air and neon and people pretending they aren’t a little feral after dark.
Finally, Knox says, “You asked for something. I gave it.”
That’s such a Knox answer I almost laugh.
“I know.” I glance up at him. “That’s sort of the problem.”
His brow dips. “Didn’t seem like a problem then.”
Heat floods my face so fast it feels violent.
“No,” I mutter. “It definitely did not.”
A tiny flicker of satisfaction moves through his expression. Barely there. But I catch it.
God. Him pleased with himself is unfairly hot.
“I just mean—” I exhale. “I don’t usually let men finger me in alleys behind my workplace. I’m trying to process the fact that apparently now I do.”
His mouth twitches.
“Funny?”
“A little.”
I elbow him. Or try to. It’s like elbowing a wall.
“That was a vulnerable confession, asshole.”
“You’re doing okay.”
I snort. “Great. Thriving. Totally normal. Not at all replaying what you—” I cut myself off.
He looks down at me again. “What I . . .?”
I should keep my mouth shut.
I don’t.
“What you said. About the table. The club.”
He doesn’t slow. Doesn’t look at me. “And?”
“Was that—were you just—” I can’t get the question out clean.
He glances down, one eyebrow lifting. “Playing?”
I nod once.
“No.”
I let that sit half a block. He matches my pace exactly, like he could do this all night.
“You’d really do that,” I say. Not quite a question.
“Yep.”
“With me.”
“Yes.”
“In front of forty people.”
“Forty. Two. Five.” He glances down at me. “Number isn’t the point.”
“What’s the point?”
“You like being seen.” He says it the way he says everything—flat, certain, like he’s reading it off me.
I swallow.
He says it like it’s a fact in a file somewhere. You like being seen. No judgment or weirdness. Just a thing he’s clocked and marked as true.
“And that doesn’t . . . bother you?” I ask.
His gaze cuts to me. “Should it?”
I have no idea how to answer that.
Most men I’ve known would either act threatened by a woman wanting anything out loud or turn it into a joke so they didn’t have to admit they were turned on by it. Knox just accepts it. No—he seems to fucking like it.
We turn down my street. The night is quieter here, the tourist noise thinning into the soft rush of distant traffic and the hiss of tires on damp pavement.
“I don’t know,” I say finally. “It feels like it should.”
“Why?”
I shove my hands deeper into my pockets. “Because decent girls aren’t supposed to get off on the idea of being watched.” I bite my lip and force the second part out too. “Or the idea of being with multiple guys at once.”
Knox is quiet for a beat.
“Good thing I don’t want decent.”
I stumble half a step.
He catches my elbow, steadying me like it’s nothing, like he didn’t just drop that into the middle of my bloodstream and set everything on fire.
“What do you want?” I ask, too fast.
His hand leaves my arm. “You.”
Jesus.
We reach my building. He stops at the base of the stairs and pulls my bag from his shoulder and hooks it over mine. “Goodnight, Fury.”
“Come upstairs with me,” I say.
He goes still.
“You say I like to be watched. So if you’re going to watch me all night, do it from the couch like a person who’s had his fingers inside me instead of from the street like a stalker.
” I reach for his hand and tug. It’s so big I end up holding only two of his fingers, which should be ridiculous and somehow isn’t.
“I’ll make coffee. Or tea. Or whatever giants drink.
Maybe I’ll ask you to help me get undressed. ”
He hesitates. Glances at the building. And then—small miracle—he lets me pull him.
One step. Another. Up the stairs, his hand warm and rough around mine, and I’m trying very hard not to think about what those hands did yesterday, what they could do tonight.
I reach the door, remember the lock is still half busted, and brace myself for the usual fight.
But when I turn the handle, it gives at once.
Either it’s unlocked, or it has finally surrendered completely.
The smell of garlic hits me.
Someone’s cooking.
I stop dead. Knox nearly walks into the back of me.
“Amy?” I call, because Amy is the only person who has any business being in my apartment with the door unlocked. “I hope you didn’t have trouble with the door. It’s been—”
“Kitten!”
I freeze. “Milo?”
He’s at my stove in an apron that says KISS THE COOK, stirring something that smells good enough to make my stomach growl in betrayal. Messy dark curls, a grin eating half his face. When he spots me he sets the spoon down and throws his arms wide like I’m a soldier home from war.
“Welcome home!”
“How did you get into my apartment?”
“Your lock was a war crime, that’s how. A toddler with a library card could get in here.” He wipes his hands with the apron. “Don’t worry, I’ve handled it. Sit. Dinner’s almost—” His eyes land on Knox filling the doorway behind me, and his whole face falls. “Oh, come on.”
Knox says nothing. Just looks at Milo. It’s a look with a lot of history in it.
“What?” I glance between them.
“Nothing. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Milo’s already turning back to the stove. “I’m allowed to cook a meal. It’s a free country. Cooking isn’t a crime. Don’t you have a shift at Unholy Desires to get to? Can’t leave all those writhing bodies unattended.”
“You work at Unholy Desires, too?” I ask, turning to Knox.
“Security,” he answers simply, but his eyes remain on Milo. “You were benched.”
“I was sidelined, which is different, and frankly discriminatory.”
“Benched from what?” I ask, looking between them now.
Milo picks up the spoon and waves it like he can shoo the question out of the air.
“There’s a roster. A sacred democratic order dictating which devastatingly handsome man gets the honor of your company on any given evening.
Tonight was decided by committee”—he shoots Knox a betrayed look—“and the committee, in its infinite cowardice, gave it to Detective I-stay-in-my-car-all-night-because-I-have-morals-and-shit.”
“Are you talking about Holden?” I ask. Then I turn to Knox. “Is he talking about Holden?”
Knox just grunts, which I’m taking as a yes.
“Wow,” I say slowly. “You guys seriously made a fucking babysitting schedule.”
“It’s not babysitting,” Milo says, offended. “It’s protective rotational companionship.”
“It’s surveillance,” Knox says.
Milo points the spoon at him. “See? He’s the one making it sound creepy.”
“It is creepy,” I tell him.
He beams. “And yet you keep inviting us inside.”
“I’m pretty sure you broke into my apartment.”
“I let myself in to make you dinner, which is romance, not burglary. There’s a legal distinction.” He points the spoon at Knox. “He wasn’t even supposed to come up. He was supposed to deposit you and go to work like a good giant golem.”
I look up at Knox. “Do you really have work?”
“Mm.” Which is Knox for yes, and I’m still not leaving.
Milo sighs the sigh of the deeply put-upon, then brightens, because Milo’s moods have the half-life of a sparkler. “Fine. Fine. If kitten wants us both tonight, kitten gets us both. I’ll just set another place and recalibrate my expectations accordingly.”
“What exactly were your expectations?”
“An evening, Sage. A whole evening. Dinner, a movie, the slow unfurling of my considerable charm.” He gestures at the table, where I now notice two place settings, a bottle of something, and a bowl of garlic knots arranged with genuine care. “It’s our anniversary.”
I shrug my bag off—Knox takes it, of course, hangs it on the hook by the door like he lives here—and turn back to Milo. “Our what?”
“Anniversary.” He says it like I’m being slow.
“One week ago tonight, I made a decision that changed the course of your life. I sat alone in the dark, summoned my courage, and resolved that the very next day I would walk into that diner and introduce myself to the most interesting woman in Hunter Harbor.” He presses a hand to his chest. “I’m commemorating that noble agony with a three-course pasta dinner, a bottle of fancy wine, and this truly excellent garlic bread.
” He does a Vanna White sweep at the stove.
“I had dessert, but I might have eaten it already.”
I blink at him. “You’re celebrating the night before you talked to me.”
“I’m celebrating the courage, Sage. The intention. Anyone can show up. It takes a real man to lie awake agonizing over it first.”
I press my lips together so I don’t laugh, because laughing will only encourage him, and I’m still mourning the version of tonight where I got Knox up here alone and put my earlier offer to the test. I shoot Knox a look. He watches Milo like a man who stopped expecting better years ago.
“And these.” Milo abandons the stove and crosses to me, digging in his apron pocket.
He drops something into my palm. Keys. A lot of keys.
Seven sets, on seven rings, each one tagged with a little paper label in handwriting that’s somehow both neat and unhinged.
“Your new lock’s a proper one now. Deadbolt, reinforced strike plate, the works.
No more shoulder-checking your own front door like a divorced dad. ”
I stare at the keys. “Why are there seven sets?”
“One for you. One for Amy.” He counts them off, beaming. “And one each for the rest of us, so we don’t have to keep breaking in.”
Seven sets of keys. Five of them for men who watched me kill someone so they can come and go as they please.
The truly unhinged part is that I’m not reaching for the phone to call a locksmith and change it all back.
“Um,” I say. “Thank you?”
“You’re welcome. Now—” Milo claps once and rounds back to the stove. “Dinner for three. Knox, you’re staying, don’t argue, I made enough pasta to feed an army or one of you, which is the same quantity.”
“I should get to my shift,” Knox says.
The disappointment that drops through me is embarrassing in its size.
“At the club?” Milo throws up his hands, flinging a small arc of sauce onto my ceiling. “On our anniversary? Knox. Knox. We could have marked the event with a threesome.”
“I would literally tear your asshole open,” Knox says, and I choke. That’s the last thing I expected to come out of Knox’s mouth.
Milo pales. “Knox, no. I don’t swing your way.”
“Then keep your suggestions to yourself.”
“I could never do that,” Milo whispers.
Knox turns to me. His hand comes up and cups the side of my face, thumb dragging once across my cheekbone, and the whole room goes quiet around it—even Milo, for one merciful second.
“I’m not sure you should leave,” I say, so quiet only he hears it.
“You’re safe with him,” Knox says, low. “He’s a lot. He’s also the best of us at keeping people breathing.” He pauses a beat. “If you want me, you have my number now.”
“I don’t have your—”
“You will. Milo, make a chat that includes her.” His eyes flick over my head. “Tonight.”
“On it, Captain Sunshine.”
Knox looks back at me. Holds it a second longer than he needs to. Then he leans down and presses his mouth to the top of my head. Then he takes a set of keys from my hand and he’s gone—out the door, down the stairs, back to whatever shadow he lives in when he isn’t standing too close to me.
I touch the spot where his lips were and try to remember how I functioned before any of this.
“He likes you,” Milo says, far too pleased, sliding a plate in front of the chair he’s apparently assigned me.
“That was practically a sonnet. I’ve seen that man attend a funeral with less feeling.
” He drops into the seat across from me, chin in his hands, eyes bright and bottomless.
“Now. Sit. Eat. Tell me everything about your day and don’t skip the boring parts, I want all of it. ”