Page 77 of Knot Their Safe Haven

"Who says I have to choose?"

"Valid point."

We turn slowly, the room revolving around us rather than us within it. Outside, full darkness has arrived, transforming the windows into black mirrors that reflect us from every angle. A woman in burgundy wrapped in an oversized jacket, a man in expensive clothes holding her like she might evaporate.

We look good together.

The thought surprises me with its simplicity. Not the complicated dynamic I had with three others, always someone missing, always unbalanced.

This is symmetry—his darkness to my silver, his height to my curves, his patience to my fury.

"Regrets?" he asks.

"About?"

"Them. What you're leaving behind."

I consider lying, but wine and proximity have dissolved my filters.

"No."

"None?"

Of course there weren’t none. There were so many when I began to sank in the depths of those waters that grew darker by the second while I realized my time on this earth was about to run out.

"Twenty years of regrets. All used up. Fresh out."

"That's very efficient of you."

I love how amusingly easy it was to talk to him.

"I'm nothing if not organized."

He spins me again, slower this time, pulling me back closer than before. Our bodies align from chest to hip, every point of contact burning through fabric.

"They're probably planning their response," he says conversationally. "Knox will try violence first. Malcolm will attempt reasoning through medical necessity. Adyani will play the emotion card."

"And?"

I liked his thought process. How easy it was already to know these men’s weaknesses as though he’s really been putting the pieces together with all of them for more than a few days.

"And they'll fail. Because you can't unbreak something by committee."

"That's poetic."

"That's fact." He breathes against my ear, and I shiver. "They had twenty years to choose you without conditions. Now they get to watch someone else do it properly."

The music shifts again—Billie Holiday now, "The Very Thought of You" in honey and smoke. Alessandro hums along, the vibration traveling through chest to chest.

"You know all the standards?"

"Mother loved jazz. Said it was the only American export worth importing."

"Snob."

"Absolutely. Would have hated that I fell for an American."

"Would have?"