You wake to sunlight.

Warm, direct, unforgiving.

It cuts through the half-drawn curtains and lands right across the hotel room’s king-sized bed. The sheets are soft. Smell like money. Your skin still smells like him.

And he’s still there.

Xavier.

Shirtless. Back against the headboard, one hand cradling a cup of coffee, the other scrolling through his phone like this was any other morning — like the two of you didn’t just cross a line the size of Manhattan.

Your heart kicks. You shift under the sheets.

His eyes flick to you, then back to the screen. “You’re awake.”

You sit up slowly, the silk slipping off your shoulder. “Barely.”

He reaches to the side table without looking, lifts a second cup, and hands it over.

Black. Just how you take it.

You blink at him. “You memorized my coffee order?”

Xavier finally sets the phone down. “You mentioned it once.”

Once. Weeks ago. Offhand. In a courtroom hallway after a particularly brutal hearing.

You sip. Avoid his eyes. “So…”

“So.”

“This doesn’t have to be weird.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You think it’s weird?”

You gesture between the two of you. “We hooked up. After months of ‘I’d never touch you if you were the last lawyer on Earth’ banter.”

He nods slowly. “That was good banter.”

You laugh under your breath, hand covering your face for a second. He’s far too relaxed for someone who was tugging your dress off in an elevator mere hours ago.

You glance over. He’s looking at you now. Like really looking.

You tug the sheets tighter around yourself. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says. Then, after a beat— “I just didn’t expect you to still be here.”

Your stomach drops half a millimeter. But you recover fast. “I can leave.”

He’s quiet for a second.

Then: “I didn’t say I wanted you to.”

You don’t know what to say to that.

The silence stretches.

He finishes his coffee, sets it down, and finally leans closer. One arm braced on the headboard behind you, his voice low in your ear:

“I don’t usually do this either, you know.”

You turn your head slightly. Your faces are too close. One more inch and it wouldn’t be innocent.

“So what do we do now?” you murmur.

Xavier exhales a slow laugh, brushing a hand through his hair.

“Now?” He leans back and grabs his phone again, the edges of a smirk threatening. “Now we pretend this never happened. At least until the next time you show up in my office looking like sin in heels and paperwork.”

You throw a pillow at him. He catches it mid-air.

And that’s when you both know:

This? Is not over.