Page 60 of Shades of Grey & Gold

My hand finds the wall to steady myself.

I think about the car trunk with the biometric lock. I think about Gio and Rudi, who I assume are bodyguards from the car, going very still in their seats. I think about the way the men at the guest house—when I glanced out of the kitchen earlier today—had arranged themselves around a big table inside—arranged themselves around Cal.

I think about what it means that he’s here, in this city, in this penthouse, and I’m wearing his t-shirt at the top of his stairs.

I tiptoe back to my room.

I close the door, turning the handle so the door doesn’t click.

And I lock it—not because I’m afraid of him—I’ve never been afraid of him—but because I need the click of the latch to feel like I have some control over this situation when I absolutely have none.

But I do.

I could go home.

The idea of leaving sounds horrible.

I get into the bed and pull the covers up.

I stay still with my eyes wide open for a while then roll over.

There’s something on the pillow.

I smile because it’s a chocolate mint. Just like the ones hotels leave on your pillows.

I unwrap it and it melts in my mouth as I melt into the comfortable bed.

The t-shirt smells like Cal, the mix of smells that is just him, plus something underneath all of it that I have been trying to name and can’t. Something that isn’t a scent exactly but more like the feeling of a feeling, like walking into a room and exhaling air you didn’t know you’d been holding.

It smells like the library at two in the morning when the heat was on and snow was falling outside. It smells like the parking lot YMCA dance. It smells like every moment I felt completely fine in a year where I didn’t feel completely fine anywhere else.

It smells like something I lost and didn’t know I was still looking for until it was in front of me again.

I close my eyes. It smells like safe. Like home.

I am not leaving.

Chapter Nineteen

Max

Thecoffeesmellfindsme before consciousness does.

I’m aware of it—distant, warm. And it pulls me awake. Then I remember where I am. I blink and flip over, pushing the blankets from me.

I get up. I don’t think about what I’m wearing or not wearing or the fact that it falls to approximately mid-thigh and my feet are bare against the cold white tile of the hallway.

I am operating on the reasoning of someone who is following a coffee smell and has not yet fully engagedtheir brain.

I do think of Cal, and like a magnet, the smell and thought of him draw me into the kitchen.

Cal is at the stove with his back to me. He’s in a dark henley and sweatpants with his hair doing something completely unhinged that I have been desperate to see and didn’t know it. I bite down on my bottom lip and take him in. Dark against the white of the cabinets and white counters. He has a mug in one hand and whatever he’s stirring in the other and he says, without turning around:

“I hear you back there.”

Completely at ease.

And it startles me.