The special part never arrives. I know it never will.
Three nights under a mountain of blankets, a hot water bottle between my feet, and a space heater I bought with money earmarked for Elliot's sneakers — running all night, driving up an electric bill already in my name, heating a room that shouldn't need heating because a grown man decided thermostat warfare was an appropriate conflict resolution strategy.
I will not ask him. The day I beg Dominic Langley for warmth in my own house is the day I stop being me.
Saturday the weather turns overnight — that vicious snap where autumn stops pretending and winter shows its teeth. Elliot's fall jacket won't cut it. His winter coat is in the basement storage closet, which has a door that's been temperamental since before I had teeth. Old wood swollen in its frame, needing one person to brace the edges while another yanks. Harold and I have done this dance a hundred times, but he's visiting his sister in Connecticut and I'm on my own.
The basement stairs creak under my feet. Cool air, old stone, the smell of a house remembering every century it's survived. I grip the closet handle and pull.
Nothing. Not an inch.
I brace my foot against the wall. Pull harder. The wood groans but holds.
"Stuck?"
I spin. Dominic leans against the stair railing in a white t-shirt thin enough to be criminal — the kind that clings to every ridge of his chest and shoulders like it was sewn directly onto his body. Coffee in hand, watching me the way people watch someone parallel park badly.
"I'm fine."
"You're turning purple."
"It's cold down here. Some of us aren't heating our rooms to spa temperature." I wrench the handle. My shoulder screams. The door doesn't move.
"If you asked properly," he says, descending the last two stairs, "I'd help."
"I don't need your help."
"That door disagrees."
I pull again. The handle slips and I stumble backward — two steps, three — catching myself before I hit the floor. Behind me, his footsteps close the distance. Slow. Deliberate. The unhurried approach of a man who knows exactly what proximity does in a confined space.
"You used to be better at asking." His voice has dropped an octave. Close enough that his heat reaches me through the thin sweater, close enough that his soap and something darker floods the narrow corridor between shelving units. "Used to say please so sweetly I'd have done anything you wanted."
My spine goes rigid. Every nerve fires at once.
"That was a different person."
"Was it?" Right behind me. Not touching — worse than touching. The quarter inch of charged air between his chest and my back. His breath stirs the hair at my neck. "Because your pulse is doing the same thing it used to. Right there." A pause. "That one."
My hands curl into fists. "Step back."
"Ask me nicely. One word. You remember which one."
I remember. That's the problem — my body keeps an archive my brain has been trying to burn for seven years. His hands in my hair. His mouth mapping territory I'd never let anyone near. The way that word tasted when he pulled it out of me syllable by syllable.
"Baby." He says it the way you light a match — soft, precise, knowing exactly what burns.
Heat detonates down my spine and lands somewhere south of every principle I own. I spin around. His face is inches from mine — those mismatched eyes dark with something that has no business existing in a basement next to Harold's gardening supplies.
"You are disgusting." Steadier than I deserve. "And your seduction routine needs work, because the only thing I feel right now is the overwhelming urge to break your jaw."
His mouth curves. Slow, knowing. "Liar."
"Try me."
His eyes drop to my mouth — half a second — and the air compresses into something volatile. I shove past him hard enough to knock his shoulder back.
"Enjoy your coffee. I hope it's bitter."
"Everything about this house is bitter lately." His voice follows me up the stairs. "Can't imagine why."
I never get the coat. I drive to Target and buy Elliot a new one with money I'll feel next month.
The afternoon finds me grading Roman Republic essays — twenty-three undergrads who think Julius Caesar was an emperor — when movement catches the edge of my vision.
Dominic crosses the foyer. Back from a run, drenched in sweat, apparently allergic to wearing shirts indoors. He peels it over his head mid-stride, one fluid motion, and tosses it over his shoulder like a man who's never considered that other people exist in shared spaces.
He knows I'm here. This is choreography.
Knowing it's performance doesn't stop my eyes from committing treason. His back is a topography lesson I didn't sign up for — shoulders carved broad, tapering to a waist that has no right to exist on a man who sits in boardrooms for a living. Sweat traces his spine and disappears beneath sweatpants slung low enough to qualify as a misdemeanor.
He stops in the kitchen doorway. Stretches. Both arms overhead. Every muscle rearranges itself like a live anatomy demonstration and my red pen hovers over the same sentence for forty-five seconds.
He turns. Catches me.
"See something worth citing in your research, Professor?"
"Studying the correlation between physical fitness and moral bankruptcy." I click my pen. "Fascinating specimen."
That laugh — low, real, crinkling the corners of his eyes in a way that rewires something I thought I'd disconnected. "You always did like looking at me."
"I was twenty-one. I also thought wine coolers were sophisticated."
"You were twenty-one and very vocal about what you appreciated." He leans against the doorframe, arms folded across his bare chest, making zero effort to cover himself. "If I remember correctly — and Professor, I remember everything — you had this habit of dragging your nails down my—"
"I am going to throw this pen at your face."
"Shared space." That smirk. "You're welcome to leave."
"Running away?" I stand, gathering papers. "That's your specialty, not mine."
Something shifts behind his eyes. The smirk freezes — a mask caught between expressions. I've landed somewhere real and we both know it.
I take the stairs without looking back. His silence follows me all the way up.
The knock comes at nine. I'm in the kitchen, hands wrapped around tea, replaying the basement for the twentieth time, when the front door rattles. Dominic gets there first. Signs for something. Carries it to the counter and tears into the packaging with the showmanship of a man unveiling a sculpture.
A small metal component. The heating part. Sitting on bubble wrap like a crown jewel.
He holds it up to the light with theatrical reverence. Sets it on the counter between us and those mismatched eyes find mine with surgical precision.
"Been here the whole time, hasn't it." Not a question.
"Arrived Tuesday, actually." No shame. Not a flinch. "Wanted to see how long you'd freeze before you broke."
"I didn't break."
"No." Something unreadable moves through his expression. "You didn't." He slides the part across the granite. "Should be warm by morning."
I leave the part on the counter. Leave him in the kitchen. Close my bedroom door against the cold that won't last and the heat that will.
His voice finds me through the walls anyway. Quiet. Almost to himself.
"Stubborn woman."
I pull the blankets to my chin and stare at the ceiling and absolutely do not smile.