Chapter 5 · Sign Then Ask

"You can stop knocking like you own the building." I open the door on the chain, and his eye fills the gap — one eye, one slice of that jaw I used to trace with my thumb before he decided I didn't exist. "It's eleven at night, Cade."

"I signed it." He holds up a folder against the gap, close enough that I smell rain on wool, cedar, him. "Custody leverage. Gone. Read it before you slam the door on my hand."

I take the chain off. Bad move, probably. I know it while I'm doing it.

He's inside before I finish stepping back, folder already open on my kitchen island like he's done this a hundred times, like this is his kitchen and not the one I pay for on my own dime, thank you very much.

"There." He points at a signature that's still wet enough to smear if I touch it. "I don't get to threaten you with her anymore. No motion, no filing, no calling my lawyers about who Maya's father is. You want to keep me out of her life on paper, that's your right now. Signed away."

"So what, I'm supposed to clap?"

"I'm supposed to get something for it." He says it flat, like a man reading terms, but his eyes don't match his mouth. His eyes are doing something else entirely, tracking the strap of my tank top like it personally offended him.

"You don't buy this with a signature." I push the folder shut. My hand's shaking a little and I hate that he can see it. "You think five years of nothing gets fixed because you signed a page at midnight?"

"I'm not buying anything." He steps in. Not a big step. Enough that the island's between us but barely, enough that I have to tip my chin up to keep looking at him instead of his collar. "I gave up the one thing I had on you. That's not a purchase, Avery. That's me with empty hands."

"Empty hands." I laugh, and it comes out uglier than I mean it to. "You called me nothing. In front of forty people. You said my name like it was something you scraped off your shoe."

"I know what I said."

"Do you?" My voice cracks right down the middle of that word and I hate that too. "Because I've had it memorized for five years, Cade. Word for word. I could recite it back to you right now."

"Don't." His hand comes up — not touching me, just there, hovering an inch off my jaw like he's asking permission he already knows I won't give out loud. "Don't say it back to me. I know what I did. I've had five years of knowing it too."

"Then why are you in my kitchen instead of gone?"

"Because I'm done asking myself that question and getting nothing back." His hand finally lands — just knuckles, just the backs of his fingers dragging along my cheekbone, and my whole body goes still the way it used to when he'd walk into a room and every other conversation stopped mattering. "Now tell me if I still don't get to ask you to stay."

"Stay where?" My voice barely makes it out.

"Here. Tonight. Not for her. Not for the company, not for the papers on that island. For me asking you, out loud, like a man who isn't hiding behind a signature."

I should say no. I have the no loaded, I can feel it sitting right behind my teeth — Maya's down the hall with the monitor blinking green on my nightstand, Maya who doesn't know his voice yet, Maya who is the entire reason I built a life with locks on it. But his thumb moves along my jaw and every rehearsed no I've got goes soft at the edges.

"You don't get to just — walk in here and undo five years with one folder and one question."

"I'm not undoing anything." He's closer now, close enough that his breath is warm against my mouth, close enough I can feel the heat coming off him through the two inches of nothing left between us. "I'm asking. That's all this is. You say the word, I walk out that door and I don't come back till you call. You say the other word—"

"Say it." I don't know why I say it. I know exactly why I say it.

"Stay," he says, and it isn't a demand this time, it's rough and it's quiet and it sounds like it cost him something to say it plain like that. "Ask me to stay, Avery."

My hand's already fisted in the front of his shirt before I decide to do it. I feel the fabric give, feel his heartbeat hammering right under my knuckles like it doesn't know how to slow down either. He makes a sound against my mouth that isn't a word, and then his hand is at the small of my back, pulling me in until there's no island, no folder, no five years of nothing left standing between us — just heat and his mouth finally on mine like he's been rationing it and just ran out of patience.

I back us toward the hallway without breaking the kiss, one hand behind me finding the wall, his fingers already working the hem of my shirt like he's got somewhere to be and it's under my clothes. I get my bedroom door open with my elbow. I get us both through it. I reach back to turn the lock —

And the monitor screams static and then a small, sleepy voice says, clear as anything through the speaker on my nightstand, "Mommy?"

Cade goes rigid against me, mouth still an inch from mine, hand frozen flat on my ribs.

"Don't move," I whisper, and I don't know if I'm talking to him or to myself, and my hand is still on the lock, and it isn't turned yet.