Page 143 of Dark King Daddy

Imagine if life could be like this all the time. No phone calls at 2:47 a.m. No burned buildings. No men with shaking hands. Just this. A bed. A morning. Her hand on my chest. The heating system clicking.

She stirred. Her fingers curled against my shirt. Her eyes opened—hazel-green, unfocused, finding my face the way someone finds a light switch in a familiar room. She blinked twice. Then she smiled. Small, soft, the kind of smile that exists before language, before time.

“Hi,” she said.

“Good morning.”

“What time is it?”

“Early. Seven, maybe.”

She closed her eyes again. Pressed her face into my shoulder. “Too early, Daddy.”

“You went to sleep at four.”

“We went to sleep at four.”

I kissed her forehead. Her hair smelled faintly of smoke—from the yard, from standing in the cold air near the burned shed. She had washed her face but not her hair, and the smoke had settled into it, and I breathed it in and did not mind.

“Breakfast,” I said.

“In a minute.”

“Galina left something on the stove. I could smell it when I woke.”

“Galina is an angel.”

“She’s a very good cook.”

“Same thing. And I never see her! It’s like she’s a ghost. An angelic ghost.”

“She is discreet, it’s true.”

Ksenia paused. Her hand flattened against my chest. “What are we doing today?”

I thought for a moment, trying to remember. “You have the Henry Street assessment? I think.”

“That’s right. Luis can handle the site walk. I should call him.” She was already half-sitting, reaching for her phone on the nightstand, the adult architecture rebuilding behind her eyes.

“Ksyusha.”

She stopped. Looked at me.

I looked at her. The grey light on her face. The sleep still in her eyes. The ring on her hand. The woman who had stood beside me at a burned freight yard at dawn and then sat on the floor of the library and let me hold her face in my hand while we breathed together.

I wanted to say it while she was awake this time. I opened my mouth.

“You should eat before you call Luis,” I said.

Wrong. Again.

She looked at me for a moment. Something moved behind her eyes—recognition, maybe, or the particular patience of a woman who could see the seams in a structure and chose not to point them out. She leaned forward and kissed me. Slow. Her mouth warm from sleep. Her hand on my jaw.

“Okay, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll eat.”

She got up. She pulled on the oversized sweater—the grey one, the one that fell to mid-thigh—and padded toward the door. I watched her go. The phone rang before she reached it.

Not hers. Mine.