Page 105 of Slapshot Baby

I push back from the table. "Can we go, please?"

Kai leaves cash on the table and stands. His hand finds the small of my back as he guides me through the restaurant.

I keep my chin up, blinking hard, refusing to be the woman crying in public on a first date. The night air hits my face when we step outside.

Neither of us speaks on the drive. I press my forehead against the glass, watching the city slide past as I try to breathe around the knot in my throat.

"Pull over."

He does on a side street with dark trees overhead, engine idling.

"I'm sorry." I wipe my eyes furiously. "I don't know why I'm crying. I'm not a crier. I'm being ridiculous and hormonal and I'm ruining the best date I've ever been on."

He's quiet. Then: "Come to my place instead."

"Why?"

"Because you're hurting and I'd rather you not be alone when you are."

The gentleness in his voice is worse than if he'd argued back.

Anger I know how to match. This patient, immovable tenderness makes me feel like I'm swinging at a wall that absorbs every blow and stays standing.

My fight bleeds out of me.

"Fine," I whisper.

The penthouse is dark when we walk in. The city burns through the windows, scattered light across a skyline I've memorized from this angle over weeks of visits.

Kai doesn't turn on the overheads. Just the lamp by the bed, warm and low, turning the room into something intimate.

I'm standing by the window, arms wrapped around myself, when he crosses the room and turns me to face him.

His thumb traces my cheekbone. Catches a tear I didn't realize had fallen.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says.

The lamplight carves his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the shadows beneath his brow. His brown eyes are dark, focused, holding me with an attention that makes me feel like the most important thing in his world.

I reach up and trace the crooked bridge of his nose with my index finger. Down the slope of it, across the bump where it healed wrong.

"You don't know that," I say.

"I know enough."

His hands slide down my arms. His fingers lace through mine. He lifts my hand to his mouth and presses his lips against my knuckles. His eyes never leave mine.

Then his mouth finds mine. The kiss is soft, a promise delivered with his mouth because I'm too raw to hear it as words.

Something inside me surrenders.

I pull his shirt open. My palms flatten against the warm planes of his chest and I feel his heart hammering beneath his ribs, steady but fast.

The kiss deepens. His tongue slides against mine and heat blooms low in my belly, spreading outward until my skin is humming with it.

"Eyes open," he says.

I should stop this madness right now, but I have no fight left in me.