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Neither of us spoke for the rest of the drive beyond the occasional comment. Kami read her book and I finally had enough bars to check my work email.
Someone, I guessed my father’s assistant Luis, deserved a raise. Every email had a folder based on the year that was then in a subfolder based on topic and importance. Each one was marked by color and came with detailed notes.
A secondary email highlighted all the other businesses we took care of that wasn’t in the books. Luis had pulled his organizational magic there, too. Every correspondence was labeled the same way as the previous email. It made life easier just going through each one methodically, not really stopping to read anything from the previous year.
I read the most recent ones, the ones highlighted in red to get myself caught up and anything in the last six months. Once I fully understood where the company stood up until that point, I pulled up my contacts and located my father’s name.
“We’re almost in the city,”I typed out.“We should be arriving within the next couple of hours.”
I hit send and was about to put my phone away when a thought occurred to me.
“Baby?”
Kami hummed softly.
“Let me see your phone.”
Her bookmark was slid into place between her pages, and she straightened. She didn’t ask a single question when unearthing her phone from the side pocket of her bag and unlocking it. It was handed to me.
I programmed my number into her phone and passed it back.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” she teased, eyeing the series of numbers before lifting her attention to me with a raised eyebrow. “Now, I have the power to harass you any time I want.”
I captured her chin and brought her face to mine. “It’s not harassing when I expect you to use it as often as you need.”
Her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and she stared up at me, her eyes bright with everything twisting up in my chest. It dawned on me in that moment that our time was rapidly coming to an end. We couldn’t have been more than an hour and a half away from the Alexander. Once I dropped her off, once that door closed between us … it would be like the last three days never happened.
“Darius?” Her soft fingers brushed my cheek. “What’s wrong?”
I ignored her question.
Anything I said, any way I could possibly express the jagged ball of glass in my gut would only complicate matters. It was better if I just kept my mouth shut.
“What are your plans for the rest of the evening?” I asked instead.
She knew what I was doing. I saw it in the flicker in her eyes before she responded. “Unpack. Maybe some laundry. I have dinner plans with the girls tonight, but that’s it. Why? What are you doing?”
Work.
I told her as much.
“I have to catch up.”
She nodded in understanding and reached for my hand. “You will rest, though, right? And eat? You can’t just work.”
I felt myself grin around the knuckles I brought up to my lips. “I will try to remember.”
“You can’t—”
I kissed her.
I tasted her concern and her love for me.
I tasted her sadness that tasted so much like mine.
I stayed that way with her pressed in my arms, her lips warm and welcoming under mine.
I stayed in the confines of that moment for as long as possible, sketching her into my mind, folding her sounds and taste into the scrapbook of my thoughts. Every caress, every sip of her lips, every brush of our lips connecting was the most intimate I had ever been with a woman. It surpassed fucking. It went beyond the basic make out. Those dwindling minutes of her and I entwined together could have been encased in gold and displayed in a museum.
