Page 116 of Kneel with the King
“Ava.” I’m almost positive she’s the one who texted me. “She and Spencer are coming to town next month. She wants to drag us to a 6am yoga class and then feed us pastries. I guess she’s in her baking era.”
“Hard pass on the first thing. Strong yes on the second.”
I grin. “Also, Annabelle sent the proofs. The black-and-white set from the park. The one where you’re actually smiling with your eyes.”
“Frame them all,” he says, and there’s a softness in his voice I didn’t hear a year ago. He speaks to his sister every Sunday now. It’s one of the rules he made for himself once we got settled into our new apartment.
I try to make one call to Maddox each week, too. Sometimes he picks up. Sometimes I read Ezra a book over FaceTime and pretend my chest doesn’t ache when his little voice asks when we’re coming to visit again. Ari and I are friendly, and we even have a text chain just the two of us where we send funny internet videos to each other.
The radiator pops. King’s hand slides lower, wrapping around my cock. Not to push, not to take—just to hold. Toremind. To say mine without saying mine. I feel the warmth spark as his grip stays firm, and I get hard again.
“Green?” he checks again, out of habit more than necessity.
I nod. “Stay,” I say, and even I can hear what I mean under what I say.
Stay here. Just like this. Forever.
“I am,” he answers, adoration shining in his eyes.
The snow decides to fall harder, faint and hushed against the window. Time stretches, and I do actually doze off a bit. When I wake up, King is snoring lightly beside me, and his hand is still wrapped around my half-hard shaft.
I close my eyes, and my mind automatically shifts to work. Client decks and travel and a stray email from Walter from Friday with a subject line that reads “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, YOU SAPPY BASTARDS”.
I pull the thoughts back, doing my damn best to be present.I turn to face King. He always looks younger in the morning, dark curls a little wild, the edge filed down to something human, something softer. The scar on his knee—a faint, pale half-moon from last winter—peeks out from the sheet. I touch it because I can, because he lets me. Because now, a year into this relationship, I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer to anyone before.
And I know it’s the same for him.
“Still mad at me for falling off a mountain?” he asks, a light smile tugging at his lips.
“Every day,” I say solemnly.
He kisses the corner of my mouth. “Good. Keeps me humble.”
“You’re many things,” I murmur. “Humble is… aspirational.”
He laughs into the kiss that follows, and that’s the other thing we got better at—kissing without trying to win a battle. Letting it be a conversation instead of a contest. When we break, he rests his forehead to mine.
“Pancakes?” he offers again, hopeful. “I’m starving. I’m going to wither away soon if I don’t eat.”
“In a minute.”
His eyes widen just a fraction. “Asher Harrison, have youfinallylearned what it’s like to be… relaxed?” he asks, feigning shock.
“Fuck off,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around his chest.
We settle back into that easy, wordless place. If the past was all edges and tests, the present is built of softer things: an unhurried yes or no, boundaries, apologies that land the first time, safe words we rarely need but always respect.
We’re not saints.
We still bicker over who left the spreadsheet open and who stole the last of the coffee beans.
But when it matters, we choose each other on purpose.
King
I start the coffee. He’d stolen one of my sweaters and made a habitual point of not asking. It doesn’t matter, because I love seeing him in my clothes. The snow keeps falling. The city keeps breathing.
A year ago, I would’ve mistook this stillness for weakness.
