His hand hovers an inch from her jaw. She watches the space between them, the way the amber light catches the silver ring on his right hand, the slight tremor in his fingers she would never have seen from across the felt.
"I see you," she said again, quieter, and the words land like a bet she didn't know she was placing. His thumb traced her pulse point—once, then stilled—and she felt it jump beneath his touch, a tell she couldn't hide and didn't want to.
The badge edge digs deeper into her palm, a small insistence she hasn't released. She could pull her hand free. Could end this right here. But she doesn't shift, doesn't break the line of his gaze, doesn't do anything except lean forward until his nearness is the only air she can breathe.
"I want to know what you see," he says, and his voice is lower now, rougher, a blade without its sheath. "Not the headlines. Not the show. Me."
The space between them turns to smoke. She feels the table edge pressing into her ribs, a sharp border she keeps pushing against, and somewhere beneath it, her own heartbeat settling into his rhythm—the same deliberate pulse he was tapping against the felt in a hotel room that now feels like a lifetime ago.
His fingers lower a fraction, not quite making contact. "Tell me I can," he breathes, and the question catches on her name left unspoken, a threshold they have been standing at since she put her hand in his pocket to reclaim what she had wagered.
She doesn't speak. Instead, she lets her lips part, lets the tremor he already saw become permission he can read. Her eyes close—not in surrender, but in the deliberate way of a woman who knows exactly what she is choosing.
The badge falls from her grip, a soft sound against the table that neither of them breaks for. His hand finally lands, palm warm against her cheek, thumb tracing the line of her jaw as though he had already memorized every angle in the waiting.
When his lips meet hers, it is not a claim. It is a quiet reckoning—slow, searching, like he is reading something he already knows and finding it truer up close. She tastes the whiskey on his breath, the faint salt of his skin, and something that might be relief.
Her fingers find his collar, twisting into the fabric as the kiss deepens, and she feels his chest hitch once, the only crack in his composure. The badge lies on the table between them, still warm from her palm, a silent marker of everything they had been before this moment—and everything they are becoming now.
Her left hand stays twisted in his collar, knuckles white against the fabric, but her right hand moves—slowly, deliberately—down to the table where the badge lies. Her palm settles over it, pressing the metal flat against the wood, the edge of the badge biting into her flesh as if it still remembers being her proof of belonging. The warmth of it seeps into her skin, a small secret she is tucking away, and she feels the pressure of her own choice in the way her fingers curl around the shape of it, hiding it from the amber light, from the bar, from him if he looks.
He does look. She feels the kiss pause, his lips still against hers, the question in the tilt of his head. His hand on her cheek slides to her jaw, thumb tracing the edge of her pulse as if counting the beats to find the answer, and she holds her breath, waiting for him to pull away.
He doesn't. Instead, his mouth finds hers again, slower now, as though he is reading something beneath the surface of the kiss—the tremor in her wrist, the way her thumb presses the badge like a talisman. She feels his other hand find her wrist, fingers circling the bone, not pulling, just there, an acknowledgment of the thing she has hidden.
The badge is a cool weight under her palm, a line she is drawing between who she was an hour ago and who she is becoming. She presses it harder, as if she could flatten the memory of every byline, every headline, every time she called him reckless in print. The kiss deepens, and she tastes the salt of her own lower lip—she has bitten it without realizing, a tell she never meant to show him.
His thumb strokes the inside of her wrist, a rhythm she knows now, the same three taps he laid against the felt, and she feels the pulse jump beneath his touch, a response she cannot control. She releases the badge long enough to shift her hand, sliding it across the table until her fingers find his, still over the hidden metal, palm to palm, the badge pressing between them like a third party they have both agreed to ignore.
He pulls back just enough to look at her, his forehead resting against hers, the breath between them short and warm. "What are you hiding?" he asks, and his voice is rough, scraped clean of the showmanship he wears at the table.
She looks down at their hands, at the small bulge of the badge beneath her palm, and she knows he knows. He felt her move, heard the soft scrape of metal against wood. She doesn't answer, just presses her thumb into his palm, a counter-rhythm, a question of her own.
His other hand slides from her jaw to the back of her neck, fingers threading into the loose strands of her hair, and he tilts her face up, making her meet his eyes. "You're not your badge," he says, and it is not a question, not a reassurance, just a fact he is laying on the table beside the hidden metal.
She believes him. That is the dangerous part. She lets her left hand slip from his collar, coming to rest on the table beside their joined fingers, and she feels the bareness of her wrist, no watch, no bracelet, nothing but skin and the memory of his heartbeat under her palm. The badge is still there, trapped between them, but she is not reaching for it anymore.
The kiss this time is her choice, not a continuation of his—she leans forward, closes the distance, and when her lips meet his, she feels him exhale, a soft surrender she has never seen him make at any table. She tastes the whiskey again, the heat of him, and beneath that, something unguarded, something he has been hiding just as carefully as she hid the badge.