Chapter 20 Maverick
Maverick
I wake to the sound of a refrigerator settling and realize I’m already halfway to the kitchen.
Bare feet on cool wood, the house a whisper around me, Tybee’s night air pushing through the vents with that soft, salty edge.
I’m not even hungry; I’m restless. The kind of restless that remembers a metal box and decides to replace it with something warm.
A small pool of light spills across the island from the under-cabinet strip. It makes the marble glow. A bowl of peaches sits like it’s been waiting. I rinse one and slice it with a paring knife, lay the wedges on a plate, and pull out the honey. I line up a second plate because I’m not alone.
I hear her before I see her—barely. Phoenix moves like someone who learned the cost of being loud a long time ago. Her hoodie is zipped halfway, shorts loose on her legs, hair pulled up in a bun that fully intends to fall down again. She blinks at me like she knew I’d be here.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask.
“I slept. Then I woke up.” She stops beside the island and squints at the plate. “Peaches at two a.m. is a choice.”
“Peaches any time is a choice I stand by.” I nudge the plate toward her. “These are good. Juice without being rude about it.”
She huffs a laugh that’s half yawn. “That is exactly what I require from my fruit.”
I push a wedge to her fingers. She takes it and bites, and the quiet sound she makes might be the best thing I’ve heard in a week.
I drizzle honey over another piece and hold it out.
She leans in and catches my wrist in a light hold.
She takes the fruit slower this time. Honey finds the corner of her mouth.
I don’t make a show of it, but I reach and touch my thumb to that small shine and bring it to my lips.
“Too much?” I ask.
Her gaze doesn’t leave mine. “Not enough.”
The switch is small and clean. I step in.
She tastes like peach and late hour and the spice of sleep-warm skin.
I keep it soft because soft is a power people misunderstand.
Her breath finds a new rhythm under my mouth.
My hands find the small of her back and the curve under her ribs, places that anchor without trapping.
She crowds me on purpose, gentle push against my hips, a silent look at the edge of the island that says there.
I turn us so she can lean a palm on marble and not fear the fall.
We don’t try to be quiet; the whole house already knows how to listen without judging.
When her fingers catch in my tee, I lift the hem and let her slide a hand under.
Skin to skin isn’t about ownership; it’s about proof of life.
“I’m good,” she says against my mouth, clear. “I want this.”
“Say when,” I tell her.
“I will.”
We take our time. It’s not coy; it’s deliberate.
She laughs once when honey catches on my lower lip and then catches it with her tongue.
I let her lead with small instructions—slower, here, more—and I follow because some men are better at worship than command.
The kitchen becomes small and private. The world shrinks to the glide of my palm under her hoodie, the press of her body finding my body without hurry, the kind of sound she makes when I murmur what I love about her into the place just under her ear.
“Tell me something true,” she whispers, breath hitching when I do exactly what she asked for.
I could say a dozen things that would qualify. I pick the one that has been burning a clean hole in me since the first time she looked up at me in the staff corridor like she dared me to underestimate her.
“I love you,” I say.
She stills—not pulling away, just absorbing. Her eyes are wide open. She searches my face the way she searches a room for exits. Whatever she finds there quiets a line in her shoulders.
“Okay,” she says, soft as water over stone. Then, firmer: “Okay.”
“I mean it,” I add, because I once held back every true thing because I thought it would scare people. She is not people.
“I know.” Her hand finds my jaw and holds it. “I love you, too.”
It should make me reckless. Instead, it makes me careful.
I kiss her again with that in my mouth and she answers with a sound I’m going to hear when I’m an old man and can’t remember the names of the games we used to play.
We keep going until the counter becomes ridiculous and our laughter starts tripping over our heat; then we take a breath and come down slow, chests touching, foreheads leaned together while the strip light does its best impression of candlelight.
I hand her water because it’s what she always forgets when the world tilts the direction she wants.
She drinks and grins like we got away with something.
“Now I’m hungry,” she says.
“You weren’t five minutes ago?”
“I’m hungry for something different.”
I make toast and she leans against the island and watches me like she’s cataloging the parts of me that do not require her to fight. I feel taller. I feel owned, but in that good way where being claimed is the same as being trusted.
The phone on the wall rings, the sound shrill and jarring in the quiet night.
We both look at it like it broke a rule. It’s the dedicated line that gets used when no one wants to risk a mobile being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I snag it on the second ring.
“Yeah,” I say, moving instinctively to put my body between Phoenix and whatever the world thinks it has coming.
“Mr. Locke?” The night manager. Marcy. She’s competent and doesn’t call unless she has to.
“I’m sorry to ring this line. We have a situation with an employee and a police officer that needs a face.
They’re in the front office. The officer is threatening a solicitation arrest. I’ve stalled. I can’t stall much longer.”
I feel Phoenix go very still beside me. “I’m coming,” I say. “Don’t let anyone take her into custody. Offer the officer coffee. Put them in my office and turn the thermostat down two degrees—makes people want to leave. I’m twenty-five out.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up. Phoenix is already shaking her head, already stepping into my space in that way she has when she thinks I’m about to choose safety over her.
“Take me with you,” she says.
“It’s late,” I say. “It’s the lobby. There’ll be whispers. You don’t need whispers.”
“I need to be useful,” she says. “I need to see the place. They know my face. Half of them think I’m a ghost story already. Let me be the one that shows up. I’ll stay behind you. I’ll do what you say. And if I need to sit down, I’ll sit down. But I want to go.”
This is the part where a younger version of me would say no and make a plan around the idea that I have to carry everything and everyone. That kid was good at breaking and at laughing too loud after. He was not good at letting other people be as strong as they are.
“Okay,” I say. “You don’t talk to anyone you don’t want to talk to. If something feels wrong, you say it.”
She nods once. “Deal.”
We move.
We take the black SUV because we always do when we don’t want to look like we’re trying too hard. I drive. Phoenix sits in the passenger seat with her hoodie pulled up enough to make shadows but not enough to hide from us.
Tybee falls away behind us. The causeway is empty except for a truck that smells like bait and a lonely patrol car that doesn’t look up.
The city glows ahead like old money and new greed and the kind of hope that keeps coming back even when you tell it to stop.
Phoenix looks out at the water as we ride the curve and puts her palm flat to the glass like a girl making a deal with her reflection.
She doesn’t talk. She doesn’t need to. I reach over and rest my hand on the back of her neck, light pressure, no claim.
She leans into it once and then sits straighter.
The Titan-Wynn looks different tonight. It’s not even pretending to sleep. Too many people don’t have homes that let them rest, so they come to soak in the noise until their bodies give in. Phoenix recoils at the busyness the tiniest bit, moving closer to my bulk before steeling her spine.
I put my hand on her shoulder and squeeze.
By the time we arrive, Marcy has the officer in my office with a styrofoam cup and a stale sugar packet.
The employee—Rosa, housekeeping, twenty-three, hair in a neat bun because she learned early that neatness buys the benefit of the doubt—sits in the manager’s chair, hands clasped so tight the knuckles are white, face set to I am okay because she knows people expect the performance.
Phoenix takes that in like a computer and then looks at me for the smallest yes. I tilt my head toward the door. She goes in with me.
“Officer?” I say, offering my hand. “Maverick Locke. Thanks for taking a beat here.”
He’s young. Not a rookie, but not far off. He’s got that careful posture that wants to pass the test and doesn’t know what the test is. He glances at Phoenix and flinches like he knows he’s seen her face somewhere and now his brain is running tabs he didn’t approve.
“We received a call,” he says. “Allegation of solicitation in the alley behind the lot. I observed Ms. Rivera here speaking with a man who flagged me down. He alleged she offered services.”
“Services?” Phoenix says mildly.
“He implied prostitution,” the officer says, avoiding the word. “Ms. Rivera was dressed in a way that—”
“She’s wearing a housekeeping uniform,” I cut in. “A name badge. ID clip. Men can see what they want to see even when a woman is wearing a parka.”
The officer winces but hangs on. Good for him. He has a spine.
“Did you witness an offer?” Phoenix asks him. “Or just hear an allegation?”
“Allegation,” he says. “And the man ran. My sergeant is on his way and will want to know how we’re proceeding.”
Phoenix moves to Rosa. She sits on the edge of the desk instead of looming, keeps her voice low. “Do you want to speak?” she asks. “You don’t have to. If you want me to speak, I will.”