Chapter 5

The first thing I noticed was the music.

It was coming from somewhere nearby, soft enough that I almost slipped back to sleep. I lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out where I was.

Then the smell of coffee reached me.

And suddenly, I remembered.

I kept my eyes at half-mast, pretending the fog of sleep hadn't cleared yet, and watched him from across the room instead. Root stood at the stove in grey sweatpants and nothing else, back to me, hips moving in some small unconscious rhythm to whatever was playing. The kitchen light caught a tattoo on his shoulder I hadn't noticed last night, dark ink curling over his muscle, something I couldn't make out the shape of from this distance and fully intended to ask about later. He flipped what looked like an egg in a pan with a competence that felt almost unfair for a man who supposedly lived off takeout, humming under his breath, off-key but still cute.

He turned with two plates and caught me mid-fake-sleep, eyes shut, breathing deliberately even. I heard his footsteps cross the room, felt the mattress dip as he set the plates down, and then his mouth pressed warm against my forehead.

"I know you're awake," he said.

I cracked one eye open, caught. "How."

"You don't breathe like that when you're actually asleep. You do this little sigh thing." He sat back on his heels. "It's cute. Doesn't fool anyone."

Heat crawled up my neck, half embarrassment, and I sat up before I could think too hard about last night, about the moment I'd gone rigid under his hands. He didn't seem bothered by any of it, sliding a plate onto my lap like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You cook," I said, mostly to have something to say.

"Crazy, isn't it?" He said. "It's actually one of my favorite hobbies."

"That's ominous."

"It's true." He dropped down beside me, stealing a piece of my toast without asking. "Eat. You've got a lecture in..." he checked a clock mounted above the window "...two hours, and you're going to want the extra ten minutes you'll waste arguing with me about leaving."

"Who says I am going to argue with you?"

"That's what you said in your sleep last night."

I looked at him, trying to comprehend whether he was messing around or I actually talk in my sleep. 

"You're so cute." he smiled, biting into his toast.

We ate mostly in easy nonsense after that, him needling me about my highlighter collection, me needling him about his suspiciously empty apartment, both of us circling anything that mattered too much to say out loud in daylight. When I finally peeled myself away to shower, he waved a hand toward a door down the hall without looking up from his plate, already scrolling through his phone.

The bathroom alone was bigger than I actually imagined. I sank into water almost too hot to bear and let my head fall back, replaying the morning in pieces, the tattoo, the humming, the forehead kiss, trying to figure out how a man could be that unguarded one minute and a locked door the next.

I'd almost drifted off when I heard the voice.

It was a woman. She sounded like she’d known Root long enough to call him out without worrying about how he’d take it.

The water and the closed door swallowed most of the conversation, leaving me with only pieces.

“—could’ve called me back. You know that—”

Root answered, his voice low and strangely patient. I’d never heard him sound like that before. He said something about being busy, followed by an excuse I couldn’t quite catch.

Whatever it was, even from the other side of the door, it sounded weak.

I stayed still, listening.

Whoever she was, she clearly knew him.

And somehow, that bothered me more than it should have.

"—don't give me that, Rowan, I've known you since you were in diapers, I can tell when you're lying to my face—"

There was a quieter pause, then a rustle of fabric I couldn't place, and his voice again, gentler this time. "I'm still the same. I promise you that."

I couldn't make out anything else, just the low murmur of voices beyond the door. I told myself it was room service. Someone dropping off dry cleaning. Anything ordinary.

Because whatever the other explanation was, I really didn't have the energy to deal with it from a bathtub at nine in the morning.

"—your career is in my hands as much as yours, and the reporters are already asking about the two of you, so you'd better—"

I sat up too fast, sending water over the edge as I tried to hear more. But the voice had dropped again. A door clicked somewhere in the apartment, and then everything went quiet.

When I came out wrapped in a towel too soft to be anything but expensive, Root was sitting on the edge of the bed, and the second he saw me, his whole face did that thing again, like I'd walked in and rearranged something in him just by existing.

"Hi," he said, as if it were the first time.

"Hi." I crossed to him without entirely deciding to, and he caught my hip, pulling me down into his lap, and whatever caution either of us had left from the night before seemed to have evaporated in the daylight. His mouth found mine, unhurried at first and then not, one of his hands sliding up under the towel's edge along my waist, and I forgot entirely about the conversation from earlier.

"Rowan, I forgot my—"

The door.

I hadn't heard it open.

We broke apart to find a woman frozen in the doorway, mid-sentence, phone charger dangling from one hand, staring at us.

"This," she said, "is why you haven't been scoring."

Root, to his credit, didn't so much as flinch. "Elena."

"Don't 'Elena' me." She crossed her arms, taking me in fully now, and I resisted the urge to grab for a blanket. "You disappear for three days, don't answer a single text, and I find you here, doing—" she gestured broadly at both of us "—whatever this is, when you have a debrief in four hours."

"I'll be there."

"You'd better be." Her eyes cut to me again, sharper this time, assessing in a way that made my stomach drop straight through the floor. Girlfriend, I thought; she's his girlfriend, oh my God—

"Elena," Root said, amusement finally cracking through, "this is Lavinia. Lavinia, Elena. My manager. Also my mother's best friend since they were nineteen, so watch what you say around her; she reports everything back."

The relief that went through me was so immediate and so total I nearly laughed out loud.

Elena's whole expression shifted, appraisal softening into curiosity. "Well." She looked between us once more. "That explains the humming I heard from the kitchen. Haven't heard that in years."

"Elena."

"I'm leaving, I'm leaving." She retrieved her charger from wherever it had fallen and paused at the door, pointing a finger back at Root without quite looking at him. "Four hours. And you—" Her eyes found mine one last time. "—it was nice to meet you, Lavinia. Try to keep him human."

Then she was gone, and the door clicked shut behind her, and I turned to find Root watching me.

"Sorry about that," he said.

"Your career is in her hands?" I asked, the words slipping out before I could stop them. "Reporters asking about you two?"

Something crossed his face, quick enough that I almost missed it. For a second, I thought he might actually tell me the truth.

"It's not what it sounded like," he said instead, and pulled me back down against him before I could push further. "Come here. You've got a lecture to get to, and I'm not done having you to myself yet."

I let him distract me. Somehow, I always did. But underneath it all, quiet and persistent, the question was still there. Exactly where he’d left it.