The hotel room was soaked in gold and red—the kind of lighting that felt like dusk was permanently bleeding through the curtains. The air was warm, humid with leftover perfume, cigarette smoke, and sweat that hadn't dried. She sat on the edge of the bed, still in the heels she wore on the runway two hours ago, her legs crossed like a threat. He was half-dressed, guitar abandoned somewhere on the floor, voice hoarse from the afterparty, tongue heavy from cheap whiskey and too many compliments.

The room wasn’t quiet, not really. The city buzzed below them. The ice machine clicked in the hallway. Traffic hummed in the distance. But between them, there was stillness.

She tilted her head. “Are you close to your mom?”

He blinked at the question, caught off guard.

She asked things like that sometimes—serious, sudden, almost brutal in timing. Things no one else dared to ask. And always with that look, like she already knew the answer.

“Do you believe in God?” she followed, voice too soft for the bite her eyes carried.

He tried to answer. Started saying something about how his mom used to pray for him, how religion got blurry on tour buses. But she moved forward, pressing her hand to his mouth before he could finish.

“Stop. Talk less.” Her thumb grazed the corner of his lip, slow, deliberate.

He hated and loved how she could do that—slice through him without ever raising her voice.

He leaned back, resting on his elbows. “You just want the noise to stop when it’s mine,” he said, jaw tight.

She smirked. “Exactly.”

Moments later, she was snuggling him, her body a silhouette in the golden light, her hands undoing his defiance one button at a time. She tasted like champagne, resentment, and something she refused to name. Every movement was a dare. Every breath a challenge.

“You ask questions you don’t really want answers to,” he muttered into her shoulder.

“Wrong. I want them all,” she whispered against his throat. “Just not right now.”

There were nights they didn’t touch at all. Nights they talked too much. Nights they screamed and slammed doors and drank too much and said the worst things. But then there were nights like this—too hot, too quiet, too honest.

He remembered chasing her across continents before they became this tangled, carved-up thing. Remembered the ache in his ribs when she left him at a Berlin train station. Remembered the way she cried in Tokyo, mascara bleeding down her cheeks, then kissed him like she hated him for making her feel anything at all.

But now, she was here. And he was beneath her, dizzy and real, too full of wanting.

“Favorite color?” she asked again, breathless, almost smiling.

He laughed, low and dry. “You.”