Misplaced Summer - Part 10

Chapter Twenty-six: Favoritism

The organizational restructure landed faster than I'd expected.

 

Monday morning, the roster for the new business group and the client allocation sheet arrived in my inbox. I sat at my desk with my coffee, scrolling through the spreadsheet top to bottom, growing quieter with every line.

 

The most critical clients—the Ningbo account, the Binjiang account, plus the two major prospects I'd been chasing relentlessly—had all been placed into the Key Accounts Division.

 

And in the column listing the designated lead for each of those clients, my name appeared the most.

 

It wasn't an even split. It wasn't a mechanical reassignment based on original ownership. The sheet looked perfectly professional on the surface, but the bias was written all over it—the best, the hardest to crack, the ones most likely to produce results had almost all landed in my lap.

 

I stared at the screen for a long time without moving the mouse.

 

The feeling was too familiar.

 

Familiar enough that I knew immediately whose handiwork this was.

 

Back when Coco first started as an intern, I'd done the exact same thing. I'd said all the right words—"new hires need practice," "start with the basic accounts"—but when it actually came time to divide resources, I'd still gone through my portfolio and carefully picked out the cleanest, most promising, most strategically positioned clients to hand to her. At the time, I'd told myself she was hardworking and smart, and I couldn't let her burn out her best energy grinding through a pile of dead-end deals.

 

Now it was her turn.

 

She'd moved into the seat ahead of me, and then done the exact same thing I'd done years ago.

 

I closed the email. Something sat heavy in my chest—not quite displeasure, not simply gratitude, more like being nudged gently by something I couldn't name. It was a strange feeling. You know you should summon some masculine stubbornness, at least put up a front, but when the other person hands you their favoritism so openly, so matter-of-factly, you can't even muster the pride to push back.

 

A little after ten, Coco called me into her office.

 

The room had been converted from a spare meeting room—small, by the window, with a computer and a few potted plants on the desk. She'd only moved in the day before, but the air already carried her scent. Faint—not like perfume, more like some unnamed flower, sweet in a whisper-light way that never cloyed, just slowly loosened something in your nerves.

 

She sat behind the desk in a white blouse and black pencil skirt, her hair pinned up, exposing a clean, pale stretch of neck. When she saw me come in, she smiled first. "Have a seat, Manager Li."

 

There it was again.

 

Whenever she called me "Manager Li" now, there was always a hint of teasing mischief underneath, yet her face stayed perfectly innocent—so you couldn't even get annoyed.

 

I pulled out the chair and sat down, deliberately keeping my expression flat. "You sent this sheet?"

 

"Mm-hm." She nodded. "Any issues?"

 

"Major issues." I looked at her. "You funnel the best resources to me, and you don't think people will talk?"

 

She propped her chin on her hand and gazed at me, eyes bright. "Nobody knows I'm playing favorites."

 

"So you admit you're playing favorites."

 

"Of course." She owned it without hesitation, even smiled a little sweetly. "But you played favorites with me first."

 

I had no comeback.

 

She pushed the client tracking sheet across the desk toward me, her tone turning serious. "These clients are genuinely the best fit for you. You have the experience, the rhythm, the presence to hold the room. In your hands, they'll perform better than with anyone else."

 

"What about you?"

 

"I have plenty of other things." She said it easily. "Besides, your results are our group's results."

 

When she said it, her expression was completely natural—no trace of charity. It wasn't *I'm letting you have this.* It was *this is where it belongs.*

 

I looked down at the sheet, and suddenly I remembered the very first time she'd received a quality client I'd reassigned to her during her internship. Her eyes had lit up just like this, and she'd said sweetly, "Thanks, Ethan. I'll work really hard on it."

 

What goes around comes around.

 

I just never expected that standing on this side of it would make me feel so tangled.

 

"Fine," I said, closing the folder, maintaining my air of reluctant acceptance. "You're the boss now. Your call."

 

She blinked, studied me for two seconds, then suddenly smiled. "You're actually happy about this, aren't you?"

 

"No."

 

"Yes." She said it with absolute certainty. "When you're being stubborn, your eyes never look like that."

 

I frowned. "Coco."

 

"Okay, okay. I'll stop." She pulled back immediately, dipping her head to flip through her planner. Then, as if something had just occurred to her, she looked up again. "Oh, by the way, Ethan—do you have plans this weekend?"

 

"Why?"

 

"I want to take you somewhere." She said it casually, like asking if I wanted to grab lunch. "Swimming."

 

I paused. "Swimming?"

 

"Mm-hm." She nodded, voice light and buoyant. "Drive out to the coast. There's a really secluded stretch of beach out there—barely any people, clean water. We've been working so hard lately, it'd be nice to unwind."

 

I should have hesitated. Logically, what I should have been doing was tamping down every private interaction, especially now that she was my superior. I should have been avoiding even the appearance of anything.

 

But the instant she said "swimming," what flashed through my mind wasn't *that's inappropriate*—it was her in a swimsuit.

 

The thought had barely surfaced before I was cursing myself internally.

 

Coco, though, acted as if she hadn't noticed my flicker of discomfort. She waited calmly for my answer, twirling a pen in her fingers, the cap swaying gently back and forth at her fingertips.

 

"Just the two of us?" I asked.

 

"Mm-hm." Her eyes curved. "What, scared?"

 

She was using the goading trick again.

 

Unfortunately, it worked on me every time.

 

"Who's scared." The words left my mouth almost before I'd thought it through. "What time?"

 

Her lips lifted instantly—like she'd known all along I'd say yes. "Saturday morning, eight o'clock. I'll send you the pin."

 

I looked at that smug, victorious face of hers, and something in my chest went light too.

 

I was genuinely happy.

 

The happiness came in an almost unreasonable way. Like being a student again and suddenly getting asked out by the person you liked—grown adults, the both of us, yet there was still that irrepressible flutter. On the surface I held my composure, offered a bland "Sure," but after I left her office, I spent the entire afternoon making phone calls in a voice noticeably more relaxed than usual.

 

Even I found it ridiculous.

 

---

 

Saturday. The weather was perfect.

 

I woke up earlier than on a workday—showered, shaved, picked out clothes, even stood an extra two minutes in front of the mirror. In the end I decided anything too deliberate would be obvious, and settled on a simple black T-shirt with casual shorts, a thin sun-protection shirt layered over top.

 

At eight sharp, I arrived at the location she'd pinned.

 

She was already waiting by the road.

 

White linen jacket, denim shorts, sport sandals, hair pulled into a high ponytail, a pale-colored athletic bag slung over one shoulder. She stood there in the morning light, her skin so fair it seemed to glow, the whole of her airy as a breeze. When she saw my car pull up, she bent down and rapped on the window, smiling. "Morning, Ethan."

 

I helped put her bag in the trunk. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a towel edge and swim goggles poking out. My pulse jumped for no reason.

 

We drove out of the city, heading toward the coast. Traffic thinned the farther we went. Coco sat in the passenger seat, clearly in high spirits—switching songs on the playlist one minute, pressing her face to the window to watch the coastal wind turbines the next, then scrolling through a guide on her phone, mentioning a little shop up ahead that was supposed to have great seafood congee, saying we should stop there on the way back.

 

I listened to her chatter and suddenly realized how good this felt.

 

Not the taut undercurrent of the office. Not the push and pull threaded through dinners, late nights, and business trips, tangled with work and boundaries. Just—simply—going somewhere with her. The road was long, the sky was bright, the car was filled with her voice and that faint floral scent of hers that I was finding harder and harder to ignore.

 

The scent had grown more noticeable lately.

 

Not heavier, not sharper—more like sweetness dissolved into the air itself, soft and gentle, clinging lightly. While driving, I'd catch it in some unguarded moment, and my whole body would unconsciously relax. Like a string that had been pulled tight in my chest for too long—she'd brush against it, and it would hum with a low, muffled resonance.

 

We arrived around nine-thirty.

 

It was a remote stretch of coast. You could drive nearly to the sand. No tourist-attraction chaos, no crowds—just sea wind, rocks, and a long, narrow, almost-empty shoreline. In the distance, the ocean surface glittered with fine shards of silver under the sun, waves rolling in layer after layer, then pulling back, steady as a heartbeat.

 

"See? Told you—no one's here." Coco got out of the car, stood in the wind, and stretched, her voice lifting with it.

 

"How'd you find this place?" I asked.

 

"Saw it in a post online ages ago." She turned back to smile at me. "Pretty, right?"

 

Pretty.

 

I wasn't sure whether she was asking about the ocean or something else.

 

We set our things down behind a flat shelf of rock and went to change separately. There were no changing rooms at the beach—just rocks and towels for makeshift cover. I changed quickly. When I came out, she hadn't appeared yet. I stood in the sea wind, watching the waves curl toward my feet, while my pulse grew steadily less calm.

 

Then she walked out from behind the rocks.

 

I went completely quiet.

 

She wore a light-colored swimsuit—nothing flashy—but the simpler it was, the more strikingly it showed off every line of her figure. Narrow, even shoulders. Clean collarbones. The proportions from her chest to her waist were the kind that made it almost impossible to look away. She was petite—just over five-three—yet her body seemed to have been sculpted with exacting care: taut everywhere it should be, curved exactly where it counted. The sea wind swept her ponytail back over her shoulder, and her skin in the sunlight was so white it almost seemed to emit light.

 

My Adam's apple bobbed once. My gaze lingered for half a second before I forced it away.

 

"What?" She looked down at herself deliberately. "Not good-looking?"

 

"… Not bad." I said.

 

She laughed the instant she heard it, took two steps forward, and stopped right in front of me, tilting her face up. "Ethan, every time you say 'not bad,' it actually means really good-looking. Am I right?"

 

I didn't answer.

 

Because she was standing a little too close.

 

The wind was strong—any scent should have been swept clean away. Yet that faint floral sweetness on her skin was still there. Mixed with the salt-damp air, it hadn't been diluted at all; if anything, it became lighter and sweeter, like a just-opened blossom carried over by the sea breeze. It smelled so good that breathing it in made something in your chest slowly go soft.

 

"Getting in?" she asked.

 

"Yeah."

 

The water was cold at first, but comfortable once you adjusted. The bay's waves were gentle, the water clear, the bottom fine soft sand. The moment Coco entered the water she was like a fish returning home—quick and nimble. She swam a short distance ahead of me, then turned and waved. "Come on, Ethan, keep up!"

 

I swam toward her. She darted sideways and splashed a handful of water square in my face.

 

I hadn't seen it coming. Seawater coated my entire face. I squinted through the sting and looked at her. She stood a few meters away, grinning so wide her eyes curved into crescents, like a kid who'd just pulled off a prank.

 

"How old are you?" I wiped my face.

 

"Twenty-four," she shot back instantly. "Not a kid anymore."

 

Then she splashed me again.

 

This time I was ready. I raised my arm to block; the spray shattered against my forearm and chest, cool as ice. She laughed, spun, and took off swimming—quick and agile. I chased two strokes, but she'd already glided toward deeper water. The ocean held her up, sunlight falling across her shoulder blades, the lines of her body stunning enough to sting.

 

"Coco," I called after her.

 

She turned. Her hair, wet now, was darker than ever, clinging to her neck and shoulders, making that face look impossibly white. She treaded water and gazed back at me with a playful smile. "Catch me first."

 

She was doing it on purpose.

 

I swam after her; she slipped aside by inches. Every time, just barely out of reach. Every time, precisely enough to keep me from making contact. The water rippled out in rings around her. Sometimes she drifted very close—close enough that I could have reached out and caught her wrist—then she'd shift just slightly, trailing a string of water droplets as she glided away. Like a little fish. Like a little fox deliberately dangling bait.

 

Finally, while she was mid-laugh, I lunged and grabbed her arm.

 

The pull swung her back toward me, and she bumped lightly into my chest.

 

A gentle collision.

 

But my breathing still went ragged.

 

The sea rose and fell around us. When she pressed against me, her soaked skin and the edges of her swimsuit carried a coolness, yet underneath, her body heat was warm. One of her hands landed instinctively on my shoulder. She looked up at me, her eyes so close they were like a pool of water warmed by the sun.

 

"Caught you," I said.

 

She didn't struggle. Instead, she blinked. "So what are you going to do about it?"

 

That question was dangerous.

 

I stared at her, throat tight. Waves lapped one after another against our sides, and each one seemed to lap at something inside me too—leaving it damp and rising. That faint, sweet floral scent was so close now it felt like it was woven into my breathing. Not even the ocean could wash it away.

 

She held my gaze for two seconds, then suddenly smiled, twisting lightly out of my grip—like a fish that had let you catch it on purpose, then slipped deliberately from your palm.

 

"Ethan's so slow," she teased, backstroking away from me, her voice light as a taunt. "Can't even hold on."

 

I laughed in spite of myself, but beneath it something itched fiercely. All I could do was chase after her again.

 

We spent nearly the entire morning in the water.

 

Every now and then, her toes would brush against me under the surface; when I looked down, she'd pretend nothing had happened. Sometimes she'd swim up beside me and we'd float side by side, gazing out at the horizon before she'd turn her head and smile at me. Once, when a slightly bigger wave rolled through, she swayed as if she'd lost her balance and leaned into me, her arm circling around me for just a moment before she let go, leaving behind only the sensation of wet skin and a closer trace of that floral sweetness.

 

I knew perfectly well she was toying with me.

 

Knew she was probably watching to see how I'd unravel, piece by piece.

 

And I still couldn't do a thing about it.

 

If anything, I didn't truly mind being teased by her.

 

Close to noon, we waded out and spread our towels on the sand to dry in the sun. The sea breeze slowly wicked the moisture from our skin. The distant surf kept its unhurried rhythm. The world was so quiet it seemed to hold nothing but ocean and sky.

 

Coco sat beside me with her arms around her knees, her hair still damp, a few strands clinging to the side of her face. Sunlight picked out every lash in sharp detail; the tip of her nose and the curve of her shoulders had taken on a faint sun-kissed pink. She turned her head and asked, "Did you have fun today?"

 

I looked out at the sea. Paused. "Not bad."

 

"There you go again." She gave a soft little huff. "Can't you just be honest for once?"

 

"Honest about what?"

 

"Honestly say that you had a really good time."

 

I turned to look at her.

 

She was very close. The sea wind carried that faint sweetness over again. Strangely, even after she'd been soaking in the ocean for hours—seawater, sunlight, salt air all over her—the scent still hadn't faded. It had only grown lighter, as though it seeped from her skin itself, resting quietly in the air between us.

 

I studied her face for two seconds. And then I smiled. "Yeah. I had a good time."

 

Her eyes lit up at once.

 

As if she'd been waiting for those words for a very long time.

 

"Me too," she said.

 

Then she rested her chin on her knees and stopped teasing. She simply sat there, quietly, watching the ocean with me. The wind came off the water, lifting a strand of her damp hair and sweeping it lightly across the back of my hand.

 

I didn't pull away.

 

In that moment, I understood something with perfect clarity—

 

Some things really had gone too far to ever go back.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Drying Off

After we came up off the beach at lunch, we found a little place nearby for seafood porridge.

Her hair was still half-wet. She sat across from me, bent slowly to blow on the spoon. Her shoulders had taken on a faint sunburned pink. The shop had its AC on, but that faint floral scent of hers was still there, mixed with sea wind and damp, light as her breath.

I'd meant to push her to eat faster, get back to Hangzhou. But watching her — sun-soaked, the body finally a little softer — I lost the urge to rush.

"Should we go to the hotel and shower first?" She took two sips of porridge, looked up at me. "We're covered in salt water. It's gross."

I made a small mm.

This was a resort strip; that morning when we'd come, we'd casually booked a day-room, planning to rinse off and change before heading back. I hadn't thought too much about it then. Now, with the prospect of actually going to that room together, the inside of me began to tighten.

We finished, walked back along the coast road. The sun had climbed harder. There was fine sand in our sandals and flip-flops. Coco took a few steps, stopped, shook out her ankle.

"What?"

"Sand in my shoes." Her nose crinkled. She stepped under a tree's shade, then, naturally, grabbed my arm. "Ethan. Help me."

"You can't do it yourself?"

"Bending over is tiring." Matter-of-fact. Eyes crescent. "Help me."

She said it. What was I going to do.

I crouched, held her calf, slipped off her sandal. Her foot was small. The walk back from the beach had left fine white sand on her instep and ankle, a few grains stuck where the water hadn't dried — making that stretch of skin almost luminously pale.

I tapped the sandal twice. Then brushed the sand off the top of her foot with my fingers.

She braced on my shoulder, looked down at me, voice soft. "And the bottom."

"You're a lot of trouble."

"Always have been." She suppressed a smile, lifted her foot a fraction higher.

I had to hold her heel and brush the bottom too. My fingertip passed across the sole; her toes curled lightly, ticklish. Sun came through the leaves and fell across her calf and the back of my hand, hot. I was only brushing sand. My pulse should not have been doing what it was doing.

"Done." I slid the sandal back on and stood.

She tested it on the ground, satisfied, smiled at me. "Thank you, Ethan."

The smile was deliberate. Sweet, obedient, with a small triumphant slyness underneath.

I looked at her, didn't speak, turned to walk toward the hotel. After a few paces she caught up, walked very close, her shoulder brushed mine.

"Your ear is red."

"It isn't."

"It is."

"Be quiet."

She laughed out loud. The wind off the sea carried it; the laugh landed in my ears like a small hook.

The room wasn't large. The instant we pushed the door open, the AC hit us cold.

Coco threw her bag on the couch, kicked off her shoes, dropped down at the edge of the bed, ran her fingers through her still-damp hair. "I'll rest a couple of minutes. You shower."

"Mm."

I took clean clothes into the bathroom, closed the door, and let out a long breath.

The man in the mirror was me, but the expression on him looked wrong, no matter how I read it. The morning at the beach — the swimming, the splashing, the sun, the way she had walked close to me on the way back — had soaked open the pressed-down thing inside me. Surface calm. Underneath, churn.

I turned on the showerhead. Water came down.

When the heat hit my shoulders I closed my eyes, tried to clear my head. The harder I tried, the more clearly I saw her in the water. The wet hair. The water along her shoulders. The way she'd turned to smile, eyes shockingly bright. That sweet floral scent the sea wind couldn't strip.

I cursed at myself, low.

That was when the bathroom door opened.

I snapped around.

Coco stood in the doorway. She had stripped off her outer clothes; she was in a towel. Her hair fell loose at her shoulders. The faint sunburn from the beach hadn't yet faded. The heat from the shower made her look paler than before, and softer.

My throat closed.

"I forgot my shampoo." She held up an empty hand, as though this were the most ordinary thing. "Borrowing yours."

She walked in.

The water didn't stop. The steam didn't stop. The cramped bathroom became more cramped. She came up beside me, reached for the shampoo on the shelf, her arm almost grazing my chest. The faint floral scent landed at zero distance — so close it felt as if it were rising directly from her wet skin, undisplaced by hot water or body wash.

I stood there. I didn't move. I didn't stop her.

She caught the rigidity. Glanced up at me. The corner of her mouth lifted.

"Why are you so tense?"

"...I'm not."

"Oh." Drawn out. Not buying it.

She opened the shampoo, squeezed a small handful slowly. The water ran down her hair, the edge of the towel quickly soaking through. She stood beside me washing her hair, fingers running through the strands, foam and water sliding down. The whole bathroom was hot, wet, and around it that killing sweet scent on her.

I looked at her, and felt the body tightening, piece by piece.

Halfway through, she lifted her eyes to mine. Glanced — briefly — downward, then back to my face.

Then she smiled.

Not a big smile. The kind of small I knew it smile.

The tips of my ears caught fire. My face probably hadn't done much better.

"Ethan," her voice full of soft mischief, "if you're like this, I'm going to start thinking I look really good."

"Could you shut up."

"No." Cleanly. She rinsed the foam from her hair. Her mood appeared to have lifted.

The next few minutes — I barely remember how I finished showering. Only that the hot water kept falling, she kept being there, an elbow brushed me once, a wet strand of hair brushed my shoulder once, a glance flicked over me once. She wasn't doing anything. And the wasn't doing anything nearness ground at me harder than anything she could have done.

When I was done, I shut off the water first, pulled my towel around me, tried to get out fast. Just as I turned, she called me from behind.

"Ethan."

I turned back.

She was still in the steam. Wet hair stuck to her shoulders. Beads of water sliding from her jaw and neck. She looked at me, tone perfectly natural, as if requesting the most ordinary thing.

"Help me dry off my hair and back. I can't reach."

My throat moved.

"You — "

"My arm hurts." She cut me off. Eyes bright. "I swam too much today."

She always had a reason. The reasons always sounded reasonable.

I took the towel.

She turned her back to me, swept the wet hair to one side, gave me her back. The bathroom mirror was fogged white; only the outlines of two figures showed in it. I stood behind her, towel over her hair. The wet hair passed between my fingers, as soft as silk that had been soaked. She was very still. Head slightly lowered. The back of her neck and the shoulder line exposed.

I dried her slowly.

Not deliberately slow. I just couldn't go faster. She was too close. Close enough that bending my head meant breathing in the scent off her skin. By now it was clearer than it had been all day — not stronger, just closer. Faint, sweet, as if a flower had opened inside the steam, and the closer you went the lighter your head got.

"Back," she reminded, quiet.

I noticed only then that I had stopped the towel at the ends of her hair too long.

I moved down, dried the water off her upper back and shoulders. Her skin was very fine; as the towel passed across, I could feel the small rise and fall of her breathing. The bathroom was too warm. My palm was hot. My breath was hot. My head was emptied out, slowly, by that sweet scent.

For a stretch of time, I really wasn't thinking about anything.

No Su Man. No home. No should I, can I, should I not. Only the wet Coco standing in front of me. Only the scent that wouldn't disperse. Only the very clear sense, as I dried the water off her, that I was coming apart in a way I could no longer pretend wasn't happening.

She turned around.

The motion was small. The whole of me locked.

She looked up at me. There were small water droplets clinging to her lashes. Her eyes were wet and bright. She didn't speak. She just looked at me — as if waiting.

The towel was still in my hand.

I looked down at her, my pulse fast enough that it hurt.

"Ethan," she called, soft. "What are you thinking about?"

I opened my mouth. Found I could not produce a single sentence.

Because that was when I registered how completely I had let everything slide away. Not on purpose. Not as the release after struggle. Just — naturally, in her presence, in her scent, in this steam-filled wet room — I had pushed everyone and everything else out of my head.

Only her was left.

Coco read my face. She seemed to understand something. She smiled, very lightly, took the towel out of my hand, her fingertips brushing the back of my hand.

"Okay," she said. "Go on out. Or you'll start saying I bullied you again."

She tightened the towel around herself and walked past me.

The door closed softly.

I stood alone in the bathroom full of steam, looking down at my empty hand, and did not move for a long time.

Chapter tweenty-eight

The bathroom door stood open, steam drifting slowly into the room.

 

I sat on the edge of the bed in a bathrobe, hair not fully dry, water droplets seeping into the collar and leaving a small dark patch. Coco came out of the bathroom in a bathrobe of her own—white, the oversized hotel kind that swallowed her whole like a duvet, the sleeves hanging past her wrists so only her fingertips showed.

 

She padded over barefoot, her steps so light they made no sound on the carpet.

 

Only the bedside lamp was on, casting a warm amber glow that softened everything it touched. The curtains weren't fully drawn—a sliver of gap remained, and beyond it was the sea, dark and heavy, with only the lighthouse in the distance sweeping a beam of light across every few seconds.

 

She walked to the bed and sat down beside me.

 

The mattress dipped slightly.

 

I could smell her.

 

Not the body wash. The hot water had rinsed most of that away. What remained was her own scent—clean, warm, like some flower yet not any flower in particular. It drifted out from her skin, from her half-dry hair, from the loosely parted collar of her robe, spreading silently through the amber light in slow, widening circles.

 

I drew a breath.

 

Then another.

 

As though I could never get enough.

 

"Ethan."

 

She turned her head to look at me. Her freshly washed face was completely bare—not a trace of makeup. Her cheeks still held a post-shower flush, her lips a natural pale pink, slightly parted. A few tiny water droplets clung to her lashes, catching the lamplight in small glimmers.

 

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

 

"Nothing."

 

"Liar."

 

I didn't reply.

 

She didn't press. She just slowly leaned her head against my shoulder. Wet hair settled against my bare neck—cool, carrying a trace of moisture.

 

We sat like that for a while. Maybe a minute. Maybe five. The sound of waves outside was distant, rhythmic, like some slow heartbeat.

 

Then Coco lifted her head.

 

She looked at me.

 

I looked at her.

 

The lamplight reflected two points of warm amber in her eyes. Her pupils were deep—so deep I felt myself falling into them.

 

She didn't speak. Neither did I.

 

But we both knew tonight wouldn't end here.

 

She lay down first.

 

The robe loosened as she reclined, the collar sliding apart to reveal a wide expanse of skin across her collarbones and chest. She didn't pull it closed. She simply lay there against the white bedding, her long hair fanning out like ink spilled across snow. She tilted her head slightly to look at me, her gaze unhurried—just waiting.

 

Very patiently waiting.

 

As though she was certain I would come to her.

 

I lay down.

 

Unlike that night in Ningbo—when twenty centimeters of distance, a blanket, and the last remnants of my defenses still separated us.

 

This time there was nothing.

 

The moment I lay down, she moved toward me. Not tentatively, not testing—naturally, like water flowing. Her body curled into the crook of my arm, her forehead pressed against my jaw, her breath falling just above my collarbone. She was so small. Curled up, even smaller. Like a cat that had found exactly the right spot, without the slightest sense that anything was amiss.

 

At this distance, her scent became an envelopment.

 

It wasn't simply "smelling" it anymore. It was being wrapped in it. Soaked in it. It entered through my nostrils, filled my lungs completely, then dissolved into my bloodstream, coursing through every vessel to every limb. With each breath, that soft, warm, bone-melting fragrance sank one layer deeper.

 

My body stopped feeling like my own.

 

My heart rate climbed. Every pore opened. Deep in my lower abdomen, a fire was burning—steady, unhurried, continuous, spreading downward.

 

She had to have felt it.

 

Because her body was pressed flush against mine, separated by nothing but two layers of loose robe fabric. That change—the physical, undeniable, happening-right-now change—was pressed against her lower belly.

 

She didn't pull away.

 

She lifted her head and looked at me.

 

The lamplight struck her face from the side, half lit, half in shadow. Her expression was calm—impossibly calm for someone on the verge of what was about to happen. But her eyes—her eyes held something I'd seen many times before but never this intense.

 

Not shyness. Not nervousness.

 

Heat.

 

Certainty.

 

I've been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

 

Her hand emerged from the gap in her robe. Her fingertip touched down on my chest. Then, very slowly, she traced a line downward along the center of my sternum.

 

Her fingertip was warm, the pressure feather-light, as though she were touching something precious.

 

Past my pectorals. Past my ribs. Past my abdomen.

 

Two inches below my navel, she stopped.

 

"Ethan." Her voice was barely there, like something drifting in from far away.

 

"Mm."

 

"If you don't want this… there's still time."

 

I looked at her.

 

Still time?

 

Was there really still time?

 

From the very first day she walked into the office and smiled and called me "Ethan"—it was already too late, wasn't it? From the night she got drunk under the streetlights and said "I like you"—it was already too late. From the three hours on the drive to Ningbo when she fell asleep with her head in my lap, from the instant she downed half a liter of Maotai to shield me at that dinner, from the second she reached her hand over to mine in the darkness of that cinema—

 

From start to finish, I had been retreating. Step by step. From the office to the car. From the car to her apartment. From her apartment to the hotel in Ningbo. From Ningbo to the beach. From the beach to this room.

 

I thought I was holding the line.

 

But every time I retreated, the line retreated with me.

 

Now there was nothing left behind me.

 

I reached out and placed my hand over hers where it rested on my lower abdomen.

 

My palm covered the back of her hand. My fingers laced into the spaces between hers.

 

"It's too late," I said.

 

She smiled.

 

A quiet smile, spilling from between her lips, its warmth puffing against my chest.

 

Then she rose.

 

The movement was unhurried, carrying a strange composure. Her knees landed on the mattress on either side of me first, then she straightened her upper body and settled astride my waist. In this motion the robe came completely undone—sliding from her shoulders, catching briefly at her elbows, then slipping silently onto the bed like a white petal unfolding without sound.

 

She knelt over me.

 

At that exact moment, the lighthouse beam swept past the window, threading through the gap in the curtains and drawing a fleeting white line across her body.

 

I looked at her.

 

From below, looking up.

 

Her knees pressed into the sheets at my sides. Her thighs rested against my ribs. Her waistline was narrow enough to make your heart ache—tapering sharply inward from the hip bones like the center of an hourglass. Above that, those two full, complete curves gleaming softly in the amber light, rising and falling with her breathing. Collarbones. Shoulders. Neck. Chin. Lips.

 

She looked down at me.

 

Her long hair fell from both sides, landing on my chest, the damp ends trailing across my skin and sending a wave of fine shivers through me.

 

"Ethan," she said softly, "you're so tense."

 

I was tense.

 

Not the kind of tension that comes from inexperience—I was twenty-eight, had been with Su Man for six years, married for over two. None of this was unfamiliar.

 

But this tension was something else entirely.

 

The kind where your heartbeat pounds so hard you feel it in your temples. The kind where your palms are drenched in sweat but you don't dare place them on her. The kind where you know exactly what's about to happen and still feel like you're standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down into the abyss for the very first time.

 

Her hand pressed against my shoulder, easing me gently, steadily back into the pillow.

 

Just one hand.

 

Her right hand. Five slender, pale fingers, resting on my left shoulder.

 

The force—

 

My mind went blank.

 

That wasn't "pressing." That was "pinning."

 

The instant her five fingers landed on my shoulder, I felt a strength that had absolutely no business belonging to a frame her size. It wasn't oppressive—there was no pain, no discomfort of bone being compressed—but rather an absolute, irresistible, hopeless kind of immobilization.

 

Like a mountain had settled onto me.

 

My shoulder was nailed into the mattress. My entire upper body along with it, as though welded in place. I tried—instinctively, unconsciously—to lift my shoulder, to turn, to shift my position in any way.

 

Nothing moved.

 

She was using only one hand. One hand's single index finger, resting just below my collarbone.

 

One finger.

 

And I—a hundred-and-seventy-pound adult male—was straining with everything I had, as though trying to push a building off myself.

 

I couldn't move. Not a single millimeter.

 

Her finger just rested there lightly, the pad of it against my skin—I could even feel the whorls of her fingerprint. And yet this finger—this finger that looked like it couldn't twist open a bottle cap, painted in nude-pink nail polish, so slender and pale it might have been carved from jade—had me pinned to the bed like a thumbtack.

 

My pupils contracted sharply.

 

Fear?

 

No.

 

I couldn't say what it was.

 

Not fear. Fear is cold; fear makes you want to run. But what I felt wasn't cold—it was heat. A scalding heat that radiated outward from the point of contact where she held me, spreading along my collarbone and sternum, racing downward.

 

That heat tangled with her scent and surged through my bloodstream like something gone mad.

 

She was using one finger. And I couldn't move.

 

All those times before—the strength when she'd clamped down on my arm, the strength when she'd wrapped her arms around my waist, the strength when she'd pinned the chair base with her foot, the strength when she'd nailed my entire forearm to the cinema armrest—I'd always found "reasonable explanations" for the impossible. She practiced yoga. She had good leverage. She was using technique. I hadn't been trying my hardest.

 

But now—right now—she was pressing me into the bed with a single finger while her other hand hung idle in the air, casually brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

 

I had no explanation left.

 

But the thought flickered through my mind for less than a second—because she moved.

 

She lowered herself down.

 

The moment her body descended onto mine, my brain ceased to function entirely.

 

Every thought, every moral judgment, every "shouldn't" and "too late"—all of it was obliterated in that instant by a primal, overwhelming flood of sensation.

 

She was impossibly tight.

 

Not like Su Man. Six years together, our bodies had long since learned each other—coordinated, rhythmic, steady. Like a song you've heard countless times: the melody beautiful, comforting, but you can predict exactly where the next note will fall.

 

Coco was nothing like that.

 

Her body was something else entirely.

 

I don't know how to describe it—the feeling was like being gripped entirely by a warm, soft, yet inconceivably powerful palm. Every inch of me was enveloped, compressed, consumed. The tightness wasn't a dry tightness—quite the opposite: she was wet, hot, slick—yet beneath that slickness, there was a dense, continuous, almost elastic contraction that kept kneading and squeezing me without pause.

 

As though her body were breathing in its own way. And I was wrapped at the core of that breath.

 

An involuntary groan escaped me.

 

Forced up from deep in my throat—low, rough, a sound so unfamiliar even I didn't recognize it.

 

Coco heard it.

 

She looked down at me, her hair falling from both sides to form a soft curtain over my chest. Lamplight filtered through the strands, casting dappled shadows across her face. Her lips were slightly parted, her breathing heavier than before.

 

"Ethan…"

 

Her voice had changed too. Not the usual sweet, smiling "Ethan." This came from deep in her throat, threaded with breathy air, almost a sigh.

 

Then she began to move.

 

Her single finger remained below my collarbone, pinning me firmly to the bed. My shoulders, my back, my waist—all of it locked into the soft mattress like a sculpture welded to its base.

 

I couldn't move.

 

I absolutely could not move.

 

I tried. The first time she lifted her body, my hips instinctively tried to follow—but that finger was like an insurmountable ceiling, pressing my entire upper body flat. All I could do was endure—endure the engulfing tightness and heat that crashed over me every time she came back down.

 

With Su Man, I was the one who led. When to go faster, when to slow down, the rhythm, the position—all of it was generally under my control. Su Man followed my lead. We were like dance partners who'd performed countless times: synchronized, harmonious, warm—but also, calm.

 

What was happening now had nothing to do with "calm."

 

I was beneath Coco, pinned to the bed by her single finger, like a rock battered by ocean waves, stripped of all control over the rhythm. She wanted fast, it was fast. She wanted slow, it was slow. And when she went slow—that grinding, deliberate, inch-by-inch-settling-down slowness—it was more devastating than speed. Each inch of descent was a drawn-out suffocation. My consciousness was being pulled from my body bit by bit, leaving only the most primal perception amplified to infinity.

 

I clenched my jaw. My knuckles went white gripping the sheets beneath me.

 

"Coco…"

 

She leaned down, her lips close to my ear. Her breath poured hot against the shell of my ear, carrying a faint tremor.

 

"Ethan…" Her voice was so quiet it was like sleep-talk. "Does it feel good?"

 

I couldn't speak.

 

Not because I didn't want to—something had sealed my throat shut. Pleasure was spreading like a tide from the point where our bodies joined, radiating in every direction—flooding over my lower abdomen, my waist, my chest cavity, rising all the way to my throat. I opened my mouth, but the sound that came out was incoherent even to me.

 

She seemed to take my silence as an answer.

 

She straightened up, one hand braced against my chest—still that single finger, that damned, slender, pale index finger—while her other hand reached behind her, her palm pressing against my thigh.

 

Then her rhythm changed.

 

Faster.

 

Not a brutal kind of fast, but a rhythmic, undulating fast, like waves. Her waist moved like a swimming fish—each rise and fall precise, complete, leaving no gap as she took me in fully.

 

I could hear my own breathing—ragged, fractured, no longer the kind of sound a composed adult man should make. My hands instinctively wanted to rise—to grab her waist, her hips, any anchor that might give me a shred of control—but my upper body was welded in place by that finger.

 

My hands could only grip the sheets.

 

Grip until my knuckles turned white.

 

She was on top of me.

 

A body that barely weighed a hundred pounds. Nearly half my weight. Yet with her astride me, it felt like the entire sky had collapsed. Not the oppression of weight—she was light; her movements were even graceful—but a crushing dominance in the existential sense. She controlled everything. Speed, angle, depth, intensity. I controlled nothing.

 

All I could do was let her ride.

 

Like a horse that would never break free of its reins—except the horse didn't own the rider. The rider owned the horse.

 

Her voice began to change too. No longer the deliberately hushed, teasing questions from before. What escaped now came from deep in her throat—involuntary, uncontrollable, fragmented little sounds. Like murmurs being crushed. Like sighs that couldn't be held back. Like something sweet and molten that she'd tried to suppress but that spilled over anyway.

 

"Ethan…"

 

Her waist dipped lower, her upper body tilting forward, her long hair sliding from her shoulders and sweeping across my chest and face. Through the veil of hair, I saw her face—flushed, brow slightly creased, lips caught between her teeth—beautiful as a painting touched by water.

 

Her eyes opened. Looking at me.

 

From above, looking down.

 

In those eyes was something—deeper than desire, heavier than love—like a deep well. I looked in once, and I could never climb back out.

 

"Ethan… you're mine…!"

 

Her voice shattered on the last two words. It became a pitched, almost broken gasp. Her body clenched violently—that incredible, ring-like, almost consciously contracting tightness—wrapping and squeezing me at the deepest point.

 

I couldn't hold on.

 

That last shred of remaining reason, that final layer of restraint already thin as a cicada's wing—collapsed completely the moment she said "you're mine."

 

A massive, drowning, all-consuming wave of pleasure detonated from the base of my spine and exploded upward to the crown of my skull.

 

My back arched—the only time all night I managed to overcome that finger's force, because in that same instant, she released it. She let go. In that final second, she released the finger that had pinned me all night.

 

My hands tore free of the sheets and seized her waist without conscious thought.

 

My fingers sank into the soft skin at her sides, knuckles blanching. Her waist was so slender my two hands nearly closed around it.

 

And then I came.

 

For those few seconds, I couldn't hear anything.

 

The world became white noise.

 

When awareness slowly returned, I found myself collapsed on the bed as though every bone in my body had been extracted. My chest heaved violently. Sweat streamed from my temples, my hairline, my neck, soaking the pillow. My hands still rested on Coco's waist, but all the strength had left them—my fingertips barely grazed her skin, as though afraid of breaking something.

 

Coco lay on my chest.

 

Her breathing was rapid too, puffing hot against my collarbone. Her hair was everywhere—across my chest, my neck, the pillow. Her body still draped over mine, soft, warm, trembling faintly, like a fish washed ashore by the waves.

 

Neither of us spoke.

 

The room was so quiet there was nothing left but the intertwined sound of two people catching their breath.

 

Outside, the waves still lapped at the shore, one after another. The lighthouse beam swept past every few seconds, threading through the curtain gap, tracing an arc across the ceiling before vanishing.

 

Coco nuzzled against my chest, adjusting to a more comfortable angle, her cheek pressed over my heart.

 

"Ethan." Her voice was muffled, breathy, sated.

 

"Mm."

 

"Your heart's beating so fast."

 

I wanted to say obviously, but my throat was too dry to produce sound.

 

She laughed softly. The vibration traveled from her chest into mine, like a very small pebble dropped into a still lake.

 

"Mine's beating fast too," she said.

 

Without thinking, I moved my hand from her side to her back. My palm settled over her shoulder blade. I felt it—her heartbeat. Through the thin wall of her chest and the softness of her skin, it struck against my palm, fast and forceful.

 

We lay like that.

 

Her on top of me. Me beneath her.

 

Utterly spent.

 

I had never been this exhausted in my life.

 

Six years with Su Man—countless intimate moments across six years—not once had any of them brought me to this degree of depletion. It wasn't a physical tiredness. It was being wrung dry from the inside out. Like a sponge twisted to its absolute limit, every last drop of moisture squeezed from it, leaving only an empty shell.

 

But this empty shell was satisfied.

 

A satisfaction I'd never known before.

 

As though some hollow inside me I hadn't known existed had been—in those ten-odd minutes, or maybe twenty, or maybe thirty; I'd lost all sense of time—completely, densely filled.

 

Coco breathed against my chest.

 

Her body gradually relaxed, her temperature cooling from its earlier blaze to a comfortable warmth. Her hand rested on my ribs, her fingers tracing absent, tiny circles on my skin.

 

"Ethan."

 

"Mm."

 

"From now on, spend every weekend with me."

 

I lay with my eyes closed.

 

Outside, the waves, one after another. The lighthouse, turning and turning. Her finger, drawing circles on my chest.

 

"Okay," I said.

 

This time I didn't struggle.

 

Didn't search my mind for excuses, justifications, or any phrasing that might make me seem less terrible.

 

Just one word.

 

Okay.

 

Coco buried her face deeper into my chest.

 

"Ethan."

 

"Mm."

 

"I'm so happy."

 

"Mm."

 

"Are you?"

 

I was silent for a few seconds.

 

"… Mm."

 

She laughed again. A little harder this time, her shoulders shaking slightly. She lifted her head, rested her chin on my sternum, and gazed up at me.

 

Her eyes in the dim light were bright as two stars. Her lips curved in the arc of a full moon.

 

"You said 'mm' three times in a row."

 

"… Mm."

 

"That's four."

 

I finally couldn't help but laugh.

 

She lay on my chest watching me laugh, then started laughing herself. The two sounds tangled together, drifting through the quiet room for a moment before slowly settling into a soft silence.

 

She pressed her face back against my heart.

 

"Don't leave."

 

"I won't."

 

"Don't leave all night."

 

"I won't leave all night."

 

She let out a contented sigh, like a cat that had finally confirmed its territory.

 

The sound of waves outside grew more and more distant, softer and softer. The lighthouse beam kept turning, but I could no longer see it—Coco's hair blocked my vision, the dark strands spread across my chest, carrying the lingering moisture from her shower and her own warmth.

 

I closed my eyes.

 

There was no Su Man in my mind. No "drive safe" text on WeChat. No figure on the living room couch watching variety shows. No silver ear fungus soup warming on the kitchen stove. No six years of relationship, two years of marriage, no marriage certificate locked in a drawer.

 

Nothing.

 

Only Coco.

 

Only the weight of her lying on my chest. Her heartbeat. Her breathing. The way her voice had broken when she said "you're mine."

 

My arm cradled her waist, my thumb unconsciously stroking back and forth over the small of her back.

 

She made a sound so faint it was like sleep-talk.

 

Then together, we sank into the dark.