Chapter 291: Breakfast

He followed her over the edge, the grip of her around him pulling him into it, and he held her eyes as he finished inside her and watched her face register the sensation with something approaching wonder.

They stayed like that for a long moment, his weight braced above her, her hands still on his arms, the city outside the window still indifferent to everything happening on the seventh floor.

"I can’t feel my legs," she said finally.

He pulled out carefully and she made a small sound at the loss and then he lay beside her and pulled her against him and she came willingly, her head on his chest and her body still trembling slightly.

"That was," she started.

"Don’t evaluate it," he said.

She looked up at him. "What am I supposed to do instead."

"Just feel it," he said.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I understand why people do that now."

"Sex," he said.

"Yes," she said. "I understood intellectually. But I didn’t." She paused. "There’s a difference between understanding something and experiencing it."

"There is," he said.

She shifted against him and winced slightly. "I’m going to be sore tomorrow."

"Yes," he said.

"Worth it though," she said and the almost-smile was back at the corner of her mouth.

He ran his hand down her back and she closed her eyes and for a long moment neither of them said anything.

"Sean," she said eventually, her voice quieter now, the post-processing version of Mia who was filing observations for later examination.

"Yeah."

"I think I’m in trouble," she said.

He looked at her.

She opened her eyes and met his gaze and the evaluating expression was back but softer, colored by something she hadn’t entirely decided to name. "You’re very good at this," she said. "The patience. The guiding. The." She gestured vaguely at the bed and both of them in it.

"Is that a problem," he said.

"It might be," she said. "Because now I know what I was missing and I’m going to want it again."

He looked at her.

"And I don’t know what that means," she said. "For the portfolio. The partnership. Any of it."

He didn’t say anything.

She pressed her lips together. "You’re not going to answer that, are you."

"You haven’t asked a question," he said.

She looked at him for a long moment and then she said, "What happens now," and something in her voice had shifted from the practical tone she used for business to something quieter.

"We figure it out," he said.

"Together," she said. It wasn’t a question.

"Together," he said.

And next they slept off cuddling each other.

======================

Sean woke at six forty-seven.

Mia was sitting up.

Not just awake. Sitting up and looking at the window with her knees drawn to her chest and the expression she had when she was thinking about something specific and hadn’t decided what to do with it yet.

She heard him move and looked over.

"You were already awake," she said.

"Five minutes ago," he said.

She looked at the window again. "The city looks different from this floor."

He looked at it with her. The early version of it, the one that existed before the day made demands.

"Not better," she said. "Just different. Like it doesn’t know anyone’s watching yet."

He looked at her.

She was still looking at the window.

’That’s not about the city,’ he thought.

He didn’t say that.

"Are you hungry," he said instead.

"No," she said. Then: "Yes. A little."

"There’s a place downstairs," he said.

"I know," she said. "I looked at the hotel’s amenities page while you were sleeping."

"Of course you did," he said.

She looked at him then, the sideways version. "Is that annoying."

"It’s you," he said. "So no."

She pressed her lips together and looked back at the window. The small contained version of pleased that was the Mia version of pleased.

===========

They went downstairs at seven fifteen.

The hotel’s breakfast room was warm and quiet, the specific morning atmosphere of somewhere that understood its guests arrived at this hour wanting to exist without being required to perform anything.

Mia ordered efficiently. Eggs, toast, coffee. The waiter wrote it down and she watched him write it to make sure he’d gotten it right and Sean watched her watch him and felt something settle warmly in the background of the morning.

He paid when the food arrived.

[44 dollars spent]

[Balance: $68,760,515]

[88 dollars received — 2x baseline]

[New Balance: $68,760,603]

Mia looked at the food and then at him. "You didn’t have to."

"I know," he said.

"That’s going to keep being your answer isn’t it," she said.

"It keeps being accurate," he said.

She picked up her fork. "I have a question."

"You have several questions," he said. "From last night."

She looked at him. "I said one."

"You had the one you said out loud and the ones you didn’t," he said.

She ate a piece of toast and didn’t confirm this, which confirmed it completely.

"Ask," he said.

"The investment club," she said. "Marcus and Derek and Priya and Joel."

"Yes," he said.

"They’re your people," she said. Not romantically. Specifically. "You built something with them that’s actually real. Not a network. Not useful contacts. Actual people."

"Yes," he said.

"How do you do that," she said. "Build actual things with people."

He thought about the honest answer.

"I pay attention to who they are," he said. "Not what they can do. Who they are. And then I give them something real to apply that to and I don’t manage the outcome."

Mia held her coffee cup.

"That’s harder than it sounds," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Most people manage outcomes," she said.

"Most people are afraid of what happens if they don’t," he said.

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she went back to her eggs with the focused appreciation of someone who had made a decision and was finished examining it.

They ate in the easy quiet of two people who had established something the night before and were now finding out what the morning version of it felt like.

It felt uncomplicated.

Which, for Mia, was the best possible version.