Page 43 of Rhodes

Trey lifts two fingers off the counter toward me. "Thanks for the water, Tilly."

"Yeah. Drive safe."

He goes. The deadbolt clicks behind him, then his boots on the steps, then the truck coughing to life outside and pulling away, the sound thinning down the street until it's gone.

I turn on Rhodes. "Okay. What crawled up your ass and died?"

He scrubs a hand down his face. "I don't love getting woken up by some guy honking like a goose in my kitchen."

"I thought it was my kitchen too."

"It is." He drops his hand. "But you have to admit the guy is loud."

That lands sideways. I open my mouth to fire back and instead the laugh comes up out of nowhere, because he's right. He's completely right. Trey sounds like something being murdered in a barn, and Rhodes stumbled out here half-asleep and got flattened by it. I start laughing, and I can't stop.

"He does," I get out. "God, he really does."

"Thank you."

"You're loud too, you know." I lean back against the counter. "You're not exactly a whisper."

"I don't sound like a goose."

"No. His is genuinely terrible." I wipe under my eye. "Which is a shame, because he's got a cute smile."

Rhodes shrugs one bare shoulder. "I think the guy looks goofy anyway."

That does it. I fold in half over the counter, wheezing, and it's worse because I'm trying to be quiet and I can't, and Rhodes is standing there in his wrecked hair with that almost-smile cracking open into a real one, and then he's laughing too, rough and helpless, both of us in the dark kitchen with that abandoned red cup between us, and yesterday is just gone.

It runs itself out the way laughing always does, in little aftershocks, both of us catching a breath and losing it again over nothing. Finally I wipe my eyes and push off the counter.

"Okay. I'm going to bed before I wake up the whole street." I grab the red cup and toss it in the trash. "Sorry I got you up. That's on me."

"It's fine."

"I promise to stop bringing home bad laughers after ten." I hold up a hand. "Scout's honor. Curfew on the geese."

"That's all I ask." He rubs the back of his neck, still half in sleep. "Set the bar low."

"It's practically on the floor."

We both turn for the doorway in tandem. It's a narrow gap, the arch between the kitchen and the hall, and I move left to let him through first. He moves left too. I catch myself and go right. He goes right. For a second we're just two people bobbing at each other in the dark like idiots, and I laugh again, short, and step to slide past.

He steps the same way.

We hit. It's not hard, just chest to chest, the bare front of him against me before either of us can stop it. My hand comes up flat on his stomach on instinct, and there's the whole of him right there, all that warm skin, and I get a full breath of him before I can help it. Soap gone soft from the pillow, sleep, the plain smell of a body that's been in bed. Heat comes off him like a stone that sat in the sun all day.

Something low in me pulls tight, but it’s gone before I can name it. It goes up through my chest and takes the bottom out of my breath.

And I know exactly why. He's a good-looking man standing three inches from me wearing almost nothing at eleven at night. That's just what that is. My body's got eyes and a pulse. There's nothing to argue with there.

"Sorry," I say, and my voice comes out fine.

"Go." He steps back and flattens himself against the frame, giving me the whole doorway. "You first."

"Thank you."

I go. He doesn't move while I pass, giving me the room, and then I'm down the hall and into my own room, and I shut the door behind me with a soft click.