Chapter 12: The Morning After
The scent of coffee, rich and dark, pulled her from a sleep so deep it felt like sinking. Dee opened her eyes to the particular gold of a Los Angeles morning flooding Matt’s bedroom. The light caught dust motes dancing above the rumpled sheets that smelled of him, of her, of them.
A month of this. A month of secret nights that had sanded down the jagged edges of their new-old thing into something frighteningly smooth. She could read the set of his shoulders from across a room, knew he took his first sip of coffee black before adding a single sugar, understood the quiet meaning behind the way he’d just cleared his throat.
He was standing by the bed, two stoneware mugs in hand. His robe was tied loose, hanging open to reveal the taut planes of his stomach, the trail of dark hair leading down. He’d been watching her sleep.
“Hey,” he said, his voice gravel-rough with morning.
She pushed herself up, the sheet slipping down to her waist. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin. She took the offered mug, her fingers brushing his. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He sat on the edge of the mattress, the weight of him tilting the world toward his gravity. His hand came to rest on her bare thigh, his thumb making an absent, sweeping arc. The calluses from years of weight training and stunt grip-work were familiar now.
She sipped the coffee. Perfect. He’d learned.
The silence stretched, comfortable but charged. It was in the way his jaw was tight, the way he stared into his own mug like it held inconvenient truths.
“Spill it, Bomer,” she said softly.
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “I don’t want to share you with the world.” He said it to his coffee. “The thought of some photographer catching us leaving a dinner, of the headlines, the speculation… it makes me want to put you in a car and drive to Montana.”
“But.”
“But.” He finally looked at her, his blue eyes stark. “I can’t keep lying to your father. Not like this. Every time he talks about trust, about legacy, it feels like I’m stealing from him. And you’re the thing I’m stealing.”
She set her mug down on the nightstand, next to the script she’d been annotating for him. Her notes in the margin were neat, surgical. A contrast to the messy reality of them.
“Then don’t lie,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.
His gaze flickered with hope, then dread. “Dee—”
“I didn’t say tell him today.” She moved then, swinging a leg over him to straddle his lap, the sheet falling away completely. His robe fell open further. She felt him, already hard, against her. “But let’s not ruin this morning with a problem we don’t have to solve in the next five minutes.”
She kissed him. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a distraction, a conversation. Her tongue slid against his, tasting of coffee and resolve. He groaned into her mouth, his hands coming up to cup her ass, pulling her closer, grinding her against his length.
“Christ, you’re a menace,” he breathed, breaking the kiss, his forehead against hers.
“You love it.” She reached between them, her fingers wrapping around him, guiding him to her entrance. She sank down slowly, watching his eyes roll back, feeling the exquisite stretch as she took him all in. A joint gasp, sharp and shuddering, filled the space between them.
“Fuck, Dee,” he choked out, his head falling back, tendons standing out in his neck.
She began to move, a slow, deep roll of her hips that was less about urgency and more about immersion. Her hands braced on his shoulders, she set a rhythm that was deliberate, savoring. The morning light painted the sweat starting to gleam on his chest, gilded the curve of her breast as she leaned into him.
His hands were everywhere, mapping her spine, gripping her hips, sliding up to tangle in her chestnut hair. He pulled her mouth back to his, the kiss messy and desperate. The coffee was forgotten, steaming its aroma into a room now filled with the sound of skin, of breath, of the soft, wet rhythm of their joining.
He flipped her suddenly, with a strength that still surprised her, onto her back. The pillows muffled her laugh-turned-moan. He drove into her then, a new urgency in his thrusts, as if trying to erase the looming conversation through sheer physical force. His mouth found her nipple, laving, sucking, his teeth grazing the peak until she cried out.
The tension that had been coiled in her belly since she walked out of The Ivy, since she faced down Pryce with nothing but a folder of cold justice, snapped. It unraveled in a wave of pure, mindless sensation. She came with a sharp cry, her inner walls clenching around him in rhythmic pulses, her nails digging into the hard muscle of his back.
He followed with a broken sound, shuddering, spilling into her, his whole weight collapsing onto her for a moment before he caught himself on his elbows. They lay there, fused, breathing in ragged unison.
The sunlight had moved, now painting a bright rectangle on the floorboards. The coffee on the nightstand was undeniably cold.
He rolled to his side, taking her with him, not letting go. His fingers traced the line of her jaw. “The Pryce thing,” he said quietly, his voice wrecked. “You never really told me how you did it. Just that it was handled.”
She nestled into the crook of his arm. “I used what he feared most. Exposure. In a very specific, documented way.”
“You scare me sometimes.” He said it with awe, not fear.
“Good.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “You should be scared of the woman who knows where all the bodies are buried. Especially when she’s in your bed.”
He was silent for a long time, his heartbeat steady under her ear. “I want to tell him. Simon. Next week. After the premiere.”
The finality in his voice was a door clicking shut. No going back. Dee closed her eyes. She saw her father’s face, the trust, the pride he had in Matt, the complicated, possessive love he had for her. It would break something. Maybe many things.
But the weight of Matt beside her, the scent of their sex, the memory of a thousand stolen glances over a decade—it was heavier.
“Okay,” she said into his skin.
Just that one word. It was a vow. It was an end. It was a beginning that terrified her more than any folder full of secrets ever could.