Misha had her back against his kitchen counter, his hands braced on either side of her hips, not touching, just close enough that she had to tip her chin up to look at him. The pierced eyebrow ring caught the stove light. The ink crawling up his forearm flexed when he shifted his weight.

"Say it again," he said. "The thing about girl code."

"Misha."

"No, say it. I want to hear you say the rule out loud while you're standing in my kitchen at midnight for the third time this month."

She didn't say it. She just looked at him with that face she made when she was furious at herself and turned on anyway, and fuck, that face was going to ruin him.

"Allison called me today," he said.

Something flickered across her — there it was. The thing she didn't want him to see.

"She wants to try again." He let that sit. "Said she misses what we had. Asked if I'd come by Sunday."

"Are you going?"

"Does it matter to you?"

"Don't be a dick."

"I'm not being a dick, I'm asking a real question." He dropped his head closer, close enough that his next words landed against her temple instead of the air between them. "You've spent two months sneaking out of my place before sunrise like I'm something to be ashamed of. Like you're something to be ashamed of. So yeah — I want to know if it matters."

"It's not that simple."

"It's exactly that simple. You either want me or you're hiding behind a rule some girl made up in 2014 so nobody'd have to deal with the truth, which is that people don't actually belong to each other just 'cause they used to fuck."

She flinched, and he almost regretted the word, almost — except he watched her hands fist in his shirt instead of pushing him off, and that told him everything the rule never could.

"We talked before she even existed," he said, quieter now. "You remember that? Before Allison. You and me, three a.m. texts about nothing, talking shit about everyone at that bar. That was ours. She came after. So tell me again whose rule this actually is."

"It's not about timeline, it's about loyalty—"

"Loyalty to who. Her? You're loyal to a woman who's calling her ex trying to get him back while you're the one in his kitchen."

That landed. He saw it land.

"I'm not asking you to pick a side in some girlfriend war," he said, voice low, rough at the edges now. "I'm asking you to stop pretending this is a mistake you keep accidentally making. You came back. Every time, you come back."

"Because you don't make it easy to stay away."

"Good," he said, and finally closed the last inch of space, mouth dragging along her jaw, unhurried, deliberate, like he had all night to prove a point he already knew he'd won. "I'm not gonna start now."