Samantha hated cooking, which worked out well for both of us because I liked feeding her almost as much as I liked being praised for it. Her kitchen had become familiar territory over the last five years, even if she continued to insist that I behaved like a minor natural disaster every time I used it. By the time the onions softened in olive oil and the ground beef began to brown, I had three cabinet doors open, two spoons resting directly on the counter, a knife balanced across the cutting board, and a faint spray of tomato sauce across the backsplash that I had not yet noticed.
Samantha noticed everything. She stood beside me in black leggings and an oversized charcoal sweater, her wavy red hair clipped away from her face while she folded a paper towel into a precise square and wiped the backsplash behind my shoulder. She did it without interrupting me, which somehow communicated more judgment than an actual complaint would have.
“I was going to clean that.”
“You didn’t know it was there.”
“I knew spiritually.”
“That is not a form of knowing recognized by science.”
“I have a doctorate. I decide what science recognizes.”
She shifted to the smear of tomato paste I had left beside the stove and wiped that away too. “Your doctorate is in cell biology, not making a kitchen look like someone murdered an Italian grandmother in it.”
“Cell and molecular biology,” I corrected, stirring the sauce with the dignity of a man whose professional achievements were being deliberately disrespected in his own girlfriend’s home. “And this is controlled culinary expression.”
“It’s on the cabinet handle.”
I followed her pointed look and found a red thumbprint glowing against the white paint. “That could have been there already.”
“You’ve been cooking for twenty minutes.”
“Then it has a rich and mysterious history.”
Her mouth twitched despite the effort she made to keep it straight. Samantha was exceptionally good at holding a neutral expression while something amused her, which had always struck me as a waste of excellent dimples. I leaned toward her with the spoon still in my hand and caught the quick shift in her green eyes before she stepped carefully out of range.
“If you get sauce on me, you’re cleaning the entire kitchen.”
“I’m already cleaning the entire kitchen.”
“No, you’re cooking. Those are separate activities, Luke.”
“That sounds like capitalist propaganda designed to divide the working class.”
“It sounds like you left the garlic press in the sink.”
I glanced toward it and found the press lying in a smear of crushed garlic beside the empty package of ground beef. “It’s soaking.”
“There is no water in the sink.”
“It’s dry soaking.”
Her laugh escaped before she could swallow it, soft and reluctant enough that I immediately claimed victory. I bent down to kiss the corner of her mouth, and she let me, although her fingers closed around my wrist before the sauce-covered spoon drifted anywhere near her sweater.
“You’re a menace.”
“You say that now. Wait until you taste this.”
“I have tasted it before. It’s my favorite because you make it exactly the same every time.”
“That is called consistency. It’s one of my many attractive qualities.”
“I thought your attractive qualities were your hair and your complete inability to recognize your own limitations.”
“My ass is also excellent.”
She leaned slightly to the side and considered it with insulting solemnity. “Acceptable.”
“Cruel.”
“Brave of you to seek honesty on date night.”
The sauce had reached the stage where it needed time more than attention, so I lowered the heat and set the lid crooked enough to let steam escape. Samantha immediately reached past me and straightened it. I turned it crooked again, adjusting the opening to the width I wanted, and watched her stare at it for several seconds before correcting it a second time.
“That gap was intentional,” I said.
“There is still a gap.”
“Not the correct gap.”
“You are going to make me throw you out before dinner.”
“You would never. I brought garlic bread.”
“You bought garlic bread with my grocery order.”
“I brought myself, and I am priceless.”
“You are currently worth one dinner and whatever labor it takes to restore my kitchen.”
I caught her by the hips before she could move away and pulled her against me. At five-three, she fit comfortably beneath my chin, although she tipped her head back far enough to give me the look she reserved for moments when I had become especially pleased with myself. Her eyeliner had softened slightly at the corners after a full day of work, and there was a small crease between her eyebrows that had not been there when I arrived.
“How bad is tomorrow?” I asked.
Her expression changed so subtly that most people would have missed it. I was not most people, regardless of Samantha’s ongoing campaign to suggest I understood human behavior slightly less well than a confused Labrador.
“Not bad. Just important.” She rested her hands against my chest, but her attention slipped briefly toward the laptop waiting on the dining-room table. “Everyone who can ask a question will be there, including people who usually remember our department exists only when something fails.”
“And nothing is failing.”
“Not currently.”
“Comforting.”
“It’s a testing review. I need to make sure I can explain the results without anyone deciding the results mean something they don’t.”
“You could explain it to me.”
“You would ask questions.”
“That is usually how explanations work.”
“You would ask why insurance software is designed by people who apparently hate everyone who uses it, and I would have no professional answer.”
“You could tell them tomorrow that the system is bad because corporations are soulless.”
“I’ll put that on the opening slide.”
“Cite me properly.”
The fondness in her green eyes took some of the weight out of the exhaustion around them, but not all of it. “I still need to review everything after you leave.”
I had arrived barely an hour earlier after a retail shift that ran late because someone else called off. In less than two hours, I needed to be back at my parents’ house, downstairs in the basement apartment I rented from them, logged into the campaign with my headset on. Samantha had her meeting in the morning. I had another retail shift before teaching the next afternoon. Our schedules did not overlap so much as occasionally collide at unsafe speeds.
“I could skip tonight,” I said, and the slight tightening of her hands in my shirt told me that part of her wanted to accept.
“You haven’t played in two weeks.”
“It’s a game.”
“It matters to you.”
“So do you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She said it lightly, though her eyes dropped from mine for half a second before she looked toward the stove. “Besides, I genuinely need to work after dinner. You staying would only end with you trying to distract me.”
“I would support you.”
“You would lie across my lap and ask whether I was done every six minutes.”
“That sounds supportive.”
“It sounds like having a very large cat.”
“I’m significantly more useful than a cat.”
“You shed almost as much.”
My hand rose to my hair before I consciously decided to touch it, and I twisted one long brown curl around my finger. Samantha caught the movement, as she always did, and smiled with the quiet satisfaction of someone who knew she had won before I understood we were competing.
“Play your game,” she said. “You’ll be annoyed all week if you miss whatever happens tonight, and then I’ll have to listen to you complain that the campaign moved forward without Rae.”
“They couldn’t move forward without Rae. She’s the emotional and social center of the party.”
“She sounds exhausting.”
“She’s delightful.”
“She ran away from her kingdom.”
“For love.”
“To chase a woman who disappeared.”
“That is still for love.”
“And now she has returned home after finding nothing.”
I lifted the lid to stir the sauce again, though it did not need stirring yet. “I wouldn’t say nothing. She found several clues that led to completely different clues, one cursed ruin, a deeply unhelpful oracle, and a smuggler who may or may not have been lying.”
“So nothing.”
“That is a very dismissive interpretation of six months of collaborative storytelling.”
Samantha moved away to collect plates from the cabinet, taking the spoon from my hand as she passed and setting it neatly on the ceramic rest beside the stove. “How angry is the king?”
“Oh, he is absolutely going to punish her tonight.”
Her eyebrows rose as she carried the plates toward the table. “You think so?”
“I know so. The DM has been too calm about Rae coming home. Her father barely reacted last session, which means he’s waiting until she gets comfortable before he ruins her life.”
“What kind of punishment?”
“I don’t know yet. Probably some unbearable royal duty.” I reached for the pasta pot just as Samantha slipped a folded dish towel beneath it, catching the water running down the side before it reached her counter. “Maybe a public apology. Ceremonial obligations. A month of council meetings while old men explain grain tariffs to her.”
“That would be cruel.”
“Exactly. Rae can fight monsters. Bureaucracy might kill her.”
Samantha set the plates on the table and returned for the silverware while I carried over the pasta and sauce. By the time I went back for the garlic bread, she had closed the cabinets, cleared the empty packaging, and reduced most of the evidence against me to the spoon rest beside the stove.
“You know I was going to clean up,” I said.
“I know you believe that.”
“I was.”
“After your game?”
“Possibly before breakfast.”
She handed me the bread basket and nudged me toward the table with her hip. “Sit down before the pasta gets cold.”
“You’re very commanding tonight.”
“You like me commanding.”
“I tolerate it because you’re pretty.”
Samantha took her seat and lifted her eyebrows at the portion I served her. “More sauce.”
“You haven’t tasted it yet.”
“I know how much sauce I want.”
I added another spoonful, grated parmesan over both plates, and sat across from her. She wound the first bite around her fork with far more patience than I had ever possessed, tasted it, and closed her eyes for half a second.
“That good?” I asked.
“It’s acceptable.”
“Your face said transcendent.”
“My face was being polite.”
“Your face wants seconds.”
“My face wants you to stop talking long enough for me to eat.”
I picked up my fork, grinning as she took another bite before the first had entirely disappeared. Samantha ate like someone who had spent the entire day forgetting meals existed and only remembered once food was directly in front of her, which meant the bowl of pretzels on her desk had probably done most of the work of keeping her alive until I arrived.
“Did you eat lunch?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What did you eat?”
She chewed with suspicious deliberation. “Food.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It meets the technical definition.”
“Samantha.”
“There were pretzels.” I stopped winding pasta around my fork and stared at her until she added, “And cheese.”
“You ate shredded cheese out of the bag again.”
“It was already shredded. That makes it convenient.”
“That makes it an ingredient.”
“It became lunch when I ate enough of it.”
“You have a house full of actual food.”
“I have a house full of things that become food after effort.”
“You know sandwiches exist.”
“You know I hate making sandwiches.”
“A sandwich is not cooking.”
“It requires assembly.”
“So does getting dressed, but you managed that.”
She glanced down at the oversized sweater and leggings she had changed into before I arrived. “Debatable.”
I pointed my fork at her. “Saturday, I’m stocking your refrigerator with things you’ll actually eat before six in the evening.”
“You already said we should go out Saturday.”
“We can do both.”
“Your shift ends at four.”
“I’ll come over after.”
“You’ll be tired.”
“I am always tired. That cannot be the deciding factor in my life.”
Her gaze remained on her plate while she gathered another bite, but the corner of her mouth moved. “You’ll want to go home and shower first.”
“I can shower here.”
“You don’t have clothes here.”
“I have clothes here.”
“You have one T-shirt, gym shorts, and three unmatched socks.”
“That is practically a capsule wardrobe.”
“One of the socks has Spider-Man on it.”
“Fashion is about taking risks.”
She finally looked up, and I recognized the quiet patience she used when she wanted me to arrive somewhere without making it obvious she had drawn the map. “You could bring clothes when you come over tomorrow.”
“I work until close tomorrow.”
“Friday, then.”
“I teach in the morning and work afterward.”
“So Saturday.”
“Which was my original plan.”
“Of course it was.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but she was already eating again. “You do that on purpose.”
“Do what?”
“Make me explain my way into agreeing with you.”
“I didn’t ask you to agree to anything.”
“You asked questions in a suspicious order.”
“You’re a scientist. I assumed you respected a structured inquiry.”
“I respect informed consent.”
“You consented to bring clothes on Saturday.”
“I consented to nothing. I was entrapped.”
“You can stay in your Spider-Man sock if you prefer.”
“That sounds like an invitation.”
“It sounds like laundry.”
I laughed and reached for the garlic bread, catching the brief smile she tried to hide behind her water glass. Samantha never pushed directly when she could let me argue myself into the exact answer she wanted. I usually noticed eventually, though never early enough to change anything, and by then I had generally decided the result was reasonable anyway.
“So what happens if the king grounds Rae?” she asked.
“He cannot ground her. She is twenty-one and the Crown Princess.”
“She lives in his palace.”
“It is also her palace.”
“He pays for it.”
“The kingdom pays for it.”
“And who controls the kingdom?”
“Rae will eventually.”
“But not tonight.”
I tore the bread in half harder than necessary. “You are enjoying this far too much.”
“I’m trying to understand the political structure.”
“No, you’re trying to find out whether my imaginary princess is about to get sent to her room.”
“She ran away.”
“She left without permission.”
“That sounds like running away with better branding.”
“She was searching for Cassia.”
“And came back without her.”
My appetite dulled slightly, though I knew how ridiculous that was. Cassia had never existed outside notes, improvised scenes, and whatever the campaign’s AI generated when the DM needed a face or voice for a memory. I had written the first version of her because Rae needed someone worth defying a kingdom for, then spent six months following clues that kept turning into other mysteries. Somewhere along the way, failing to find her had stopped feeling like losing a plot thread and started feeling personal.
“I’m not convinced she’s dead,” I said.
“You think the DM would kill the missing girlfriend offscreen?”
“That would be cheap.”
“Maybe she left.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she loved Rae.”
Samantha studied me over the rim of her glass. “People can love someone and still leave.”
“Not like that.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Cassia knew what Rae gave up. She knew what it cost her to leave Calder. She wouldn’t disappear voluntarily without saying anything.”
“Unless she thought staying would cost Rae more.”
“That would still be her deciding Rae’s life for her, which is exactly what Rae hates.”
“Maybe Cassia was scared.”
“Then she should have said she was scared.”
Samantha’s eyes lowered to her plate, and I realized a little too late that my voice had sharpened. I softened it before she could retreat completely. “I know it’s a game. I just don’t want the answer to be that Cassia made the choice for her and called it love.”
“That would bother you more than her being dead?”
“Probably.” I pushed sauce through the pasta with the edge of my fork. “Dead is terrible, but it’s not a betrayal. Choosing for someone because you think you know what they need better than they do is still taking their choice away.”
She was quiet for a moment before she reached across the table and rubbed her thumb over the side of my hand. “Then I hope Rae gets an answer she can live with.”
The pressure in my chest eased enough that I turned my hand under hers and linked our fingers. “You realize this is how they get you. Next thing you know, you’ll be asking to watch a session.”
“I don’t think I have enough free time to listen to you flirt in a princess voice for four hours.”
“My Rae voice is excellent.”
“I’ve heard it.”
“You’ve heard impressions. That is not the same as committed performance.”
“It sounds like you, but breathier and offended.”
“That is reductive.”
“Does she not spend most of her time offended?”
“She has standards.”
“She sounds like a princess.”
“She is a princess.”
“I meant the other kind.”
I squeezed her fingers. “Careful.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll stop cooking for you.”
She looked at the plate she had nearly emptied and then back at me. “You wouldn’t survive withholding praise that long.”
The irritating part was that she was right. I released her hand only so I could gather the last of my pasta, while she used a piece of garlic bread to collect the remaining sauce from her plate.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” I asked.
“A little.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“That is what people say when they do not know whether someone will be fine.”
“I know you’ll be fine because you know your work better than everyone in the room.”
“That doesn’t mean they’ll listen.”
“Then make them.”
Her expression tightened, not with disagreement so much as the effort of imagining herself doing it. “That is easier for you.”
“Because I’m charming.”
“Because you assume people want to hear you.”
“They usually do.”
“They really don’t.”
“Confidence is persuasive.”
“Confidence is how you once spent fifteen minutes explaining my own degree to me.”
“I misunderstood the question.”
“You misunderstood that I had not asked one.”
“I was being helpful.”
“You were being a man.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “Casual sexism on date night.”
“Accurate pattern recognition.”
“You love me.”
“I do. You are still occasionally an idiot.”
“That seems contradictory.”
“It isn’t.”
She rose with both plates before I could take mine, and I followed her into the kitchen carrying the serving bowl and saucepan. By the time I set them beside the sink, she had already scraped the plates and turned on the water.
“You go sit down,” I said. “I’ll clean.”
“You’ll rinse everything and leave it arranged around the sink like an archaeological site.”
“I was going to load the dishwasher.”
“You put the knives blade-up.”
“So you can see them.”
“So I can impale myself.”
“That feels dramatic.”
She handed me a dish towel and pointed toward the table. “Wipe it down.”
“You’re giving orders again.”
“You’re stalling.”
“I am establishing healthy boundaries.”
“You are holding a towel.”
I made an exaggerated show of surrender and went back to the table. She had already gathered the glasses and silverware, leaving me with crumbs, a faint ring of water, and the parmesan grater. I wiped everything down, carried the grater to the sink, and reached around her to drop it beside the plates.
“Not in the water,” she said.
“It needs washed.”
“It needs rinsed before the cheese dries in it.”
“That sounds like washing with extra bureaucracy.”
“It sounds like you can rinse it.”
I took it back and held it under the faucet while she loaded the dishwasher beside me. “I still think the king is going to make Rae do something humiliating.”
“Such as?”
“Apologize publicly. Attend court every day. Give up her allowance.”
“Does she have an allowance?”
“She has access to royal funds.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“She is very responsible with money.”
“Didn’t she spend three hundred gold on a dress?”
“It was formalwear.”
“For an inn.”
“There was a musician.”
“That does not make an inn formal.”
“It did after Rae arrived.”
Samantha closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter, folding her arms as she looked me over. “You made yourself a spoiled princess.”
“I made Rae a spoiled princess.”
“Of course. Completely unrelated.”
“She is five-one, has horns, and can play a harp. We have very little in common.”
“You both like attention, compliments, expensive things you cannot afford, and being told you’re pretty.”
“I can afford some expensive things.”
“You own forty dollars’ worth of hair products and sleep in your parents’ basement.”
“I rent a private apartment that happens to be structurally beneath their house.”
“My mistake, Your Highness.”
I flicked water from the grater at her. She dodged most of it, caught my wrist, and twisted just enough to make me release it into the sink.
“Violence,” I said.
“You have a brown belt. Defend yourself.”
“You exploited my trust.”
“You splashed water on me.”
“You mocked my residence.”
“I called you a princess.”
“You called me Your Highness.”
“Would you prefer princess?”
“Absolutely not.”
Her smile sharpened. “Then finish rinsing the grater, princess.”
I held her gaze while I rinsed the last of the cheese from between the metal teeth, refusing to acknowledge the title even as her smile widened. “You’re getting very comfortable with that.”
“I’ve been comfortable with it for years. You’re the one who keeps pretending it isn’t accurate.”
“I am a grown man with a doctorate.”
“You’re a grown man with a doctorate who needs praise after making pasta and gets sulky when I don’t admire his hair enough.”
“My hair deserves admiration.”
“It does.” Her agreement came so easily that it knocked some of the argument out of me. She stepped closer, caught one of the damp curls that had fallen over my shoulder, and wound it loosely around her finger. “That doesn’t make you less of a princess.”
I set the grater in the drying rack and dried my hands before catching her around the waist. “You seem awfully fond of this princess.”
“I tolerate him.”
“You let him cook for you.”
“He makes excellent Bolognese.”
“You let him kiss you.”
“Sometimes he asks nicely.”
“I have never asked nicely for anything in my life.”
“That is also very princess of you.”
I kissed her before she could add anything else, and Samantha made a small pleased sound against my mouth before wrapping her arms around my neck. The kitchen still smelled of tomatoes, garlic, browned meat, and the parmesan we had grated over dinner, but underneath all of it was the faint perfume she wore most days, something dark and floral that had become so inseparable from her that I barely noticed it until I was close enough to breathe it directly from her skin.
She kissed me slowly at first, with one hand resting at the back of my neck while the other flattened against my chest. When I tried to deepen it, she leaned away just far enough that I had to follow, watching me with the green-eyed amusement that usually meant I had walked directly into something she had planned.
“You still have sauce on your shirt,” she said.
I looked down at the tiny red mark near my waist. “That is not relevant.”
“It will be relevant when you lean against my couch.”
“I’ll take it off.”
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“I’m an excellent improviser.”
“You’re very predictable.”
I hooked my fingers through hers and drew her toward the living room before she could decide the kitchen needed another inspection. Her laptop waited on the dining table with a notebook beside it, both arranged too neatly for someone who had really been working on them before I arrived, but Samantha had always preferred setting things up before she started. She followed without protest, turning off the brighter kitchen light as we passed and leaving the smaller lamp beside the couch to fill the room with a warmer glow.
I dropped onto the couch and pulled her down with me. She landed partly beside me and partly across my lap, bracing one hand against my shoulder while I settled her more comfortably against my chest. Her sweater had ridden slightly above her waist, exposing a narrow strip of pale skin between the dark knit and her leggings, and my hand found it with the ease of long practice.
“You have less than an hour,” she reminded me.
“That is plenty of time.”
“For what?”
“Several things.”
“You’re not starting several things.”
“I can be efficient.”
“You have never been efficient in your life.”
“I made dinner in forty-five minutes.”
“You started dinner in forty-five minutes. I have seen the kitchen.”
“The kitchen is clean.”
“Because I cleaned it.”
“I assisted.”
“You rinsed one grater.”
“It was an important grater.”
Samantha laughed into my mouth when I kissed her again, and the argument dissolved into the kind of familiar affection that made time move faster than either of us wanted. She shifted until she was straddling one of my thighs, her fingers sliding beneath my hair where it lay against the back of my neck. I expected her to gather it out of the way, but instead she began the particular motion she had discovered sometime during our first year together and had used against me ever since.
Her fingertips slipped beneath the curls at the base of my skull, spreading slowly against my scalp before tracing upward in two deliberate paths. Her nails grazed lightly behind my ears, not scratching hard enough to sting, then curved toward the crown of my head while her thumbs pressed small circles into the muscles just beneath my hairline. She paused there long enough for the tension in my neck to loosen, then threaded her fingers fully through my hair and drew them backward from the roots, giving the curls one gentle tug before letting them slide between her fingers.
Every coherent thought I had been holding onto dissolved as my head tipped back against the couch. Samantha smiled against my jaw before repeating the motion more slowly. She always began at the base of my skull, always brushed behind both ears, and always finished with that light pull near the crown that sent warmth down my spine and made my body forget it had ever possessed bones.
“That is cheating,” I murmured.
“You say that every time.”
“Because it remains true every time.”
“You could ask me to stop.”
“That would be insane.”
Her lips moved along my jaw while her fingers worked through my hair again, separating the curls carefully instead of tangling them. I tightened my arm around her waist and turned my face toward hers, but she held me where I was for another few seconds, letting her nails graze my scalp once more before she finally allowed me to kiss her.
The kiss deepened quickly after that. I slid my hand beneath the hem of her sweater, keeping it at her waist while she pressed closer, and she caught my lower lip between hers with just enough pressure to make me forget the game, her meeting, my drive home, and every other obligation waiting outside the room. Samantha could shut down when conversations became too direct, but she had never struggled to tell me she wanted me when words were not involved.
My phone vibrated against the coffee table, and neither of us moved. It vibrated again a few seconds later, the alarm tone muffled by the cushion I had dropped it beside. Samantha pulled back first, although she kept one hand buried in my hair and rubbed her thumb along my temple while I glared toward the sound.
“You set the alarm,” she said.
“Past Luke was an asshole.”
“Past Luke knew you would lose track of time.”
“Past Luke lacked faith in present Luke.”
“Present Luke is twenty minutes from home and needs to log in soon.”
“I can be late.”
“You hate being late.”
“I hate leaving more.”
The playfulness in her expression softened, and she smoothed the hair away from my face instead of teasing me. “I know.”
I looked at the laptop across the room, then at Samantha still sitting against me. “I could stay.”
“You already said that.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I when I tell you to go play.” She leaned down and kissed me once, softer this time. “I need to finish preparing, and you’ll distract me because you hate when I’m working while you’re here.”
“I don’t hate it.”
“You once lay upside down across the couch and sighed every thirty seconds until I closed my laptop.”
“I was creating ambiance.”
“You told me you were dying of neglect.”
“I was.”
“You had been quiet for four minutes.”
“A dangerous amount of time.”
She climbed off my lap and held out her hand. I let her pull me up even though I did not need the help, then collected my phone while she straightened the front of her sweater. The alarm had left me less time than I wanted, and Samantha watched my face as I checked it.
“You’ll be back Saturday,” she said.
“I said I would.”
“You also said you might be tired.”
“I’m going to be tired no matter what I do.”
“So you’ll come here after work.”
“Yes.”
“With clothes.”
“Yes.”
“And we’ll go out after you shower.”
“Where are we going?”
“I thought you wanted to choose.”
“I do.”
“Then choose.”
I narrowed my eyes at her as I shoved my phone into my pocket. “You already have somewhere in mind.”
“I have several possibilities.”
“That means you have one place in mind and three decoys.”
“You think very highly of my planning.”
“I think accurately of your planning.”
She followed me to the small entryway while I found my shoes. “You mentioned wanting to try the new sushi place.”
“I did.”
“And you said we haven’t gone to the museum exhibit yet.”
“I also did.”
“The museum closes at five.”
I sat on the bench to pull on my shoes. “So we go to the museum first, then sushi.”
“That could work.”
“You just planned our entire Saturday by repeating things I said.”
“I asked what you wanted.”
“You weaponized my own preferences.”
“Are you complaining about getting what you want?”
“I’m objecting to the process on principle.”
Samantha crouched in front of me and pushed my hand aside when I failed to tuck one lace properly beneath the tongue of my shoe. She retied it with quick, efficient movements, then looked up at me from beneath the loose fall of her red hair.
“Would you prefer I choose somewhere you hate?”
“No.”
“Then Saturday. Museum, sushi, and you’re staying the night.”
“That last part was not discussed.”
“You’re bringing clothes.”
“For after I shower.”
“Why would you drive home afterward when you already have clothes here?”
I opened my mouth, followed the chain of reasoning backward, and found no point where I could reasonably object without admitting she had done it again. “You’re manipulative.”
“You’re easy.”
“That is slander.”
She rose, and I caught her hand before she could step away. “Saturday, then. I’ll come straight here after work.”
“Promise?”
The question was quiet enough to strip the joke out of my answer. Samantha’s expression remained composed, but her fingers tightened around mine while she waited.
“I promise.”
She nodded once and leaned in to kiss me. Her hand rose into my hair again, though this time she only threaded her fingers through the curls at the nape of my neck and gave them that same gentle pull before releasing me.
“Drive safely, princess.”
“I’m never answering to that.”
“You answered just now.”
“I responded to an insult.”
“Goodnight, Luke.”
“Goodnight, Sam.”
I opened the door and stepped into the cooler night air, then turned back before she could close it. “Saturday.”
“I heard you.”
“I’m making sure.”
“So am I.”
She stood in the doorway until I reached my car, one hand resting against the frame while the porch light caught copper and red through her hair. I lifted my hand before getting in, and she returned the gesture with a smaller one before finally closing the door. My phone connected to the car stereo as I started the engine, and I backed out of her driveway with the taste of tomato sauce and Samantha still lingering on my mouth.