Chapter 215: Makima Thoughts
Not tentatively. Not asking for permission. Just directly, the way she did everything, the daring quality that had been there since a road on a Sunday afternoon when she’d looked at him and decided in two seconds that he wasn’t a mark and had gotten in the car anyway.
Mia pulled back and looked at Sean and smiled.
"There," she said. "Now we don’t have to be careful about that anymore."
Sean looked at her.
"You’re going to be a very good lawyer," he said.
She laughed. The genuine kind. Short and real and entirely surprised by itself. "Because I kissed you."
"Because you identified exactly what needed to happen and then did it without unnecessary preamble," said Sean.
"That’s just efficiency," said Mia.
"In law they call it decisiveness," said Sean.
She looked at him for a moment longer with that smile still present, settling into something more comfortable and more hers.
"Elena’s office is on Morrison Street," she said. "Thursday at two."
"I know where it is," said Sean.
"I know you know," said Mia. "I’m just saying." She picked up her jacket from the chair. "I’ll tell you how it goes."
"I know how it goes," said Sean.
"You know how it goes," she said.
"Elena is going to ask you three questions in the first five minutes," said Sean. "If you answer them the way you answered everything in the café on Monday, she’s going to offer you something before the hour is up."
Mia looked at him. "What kind of something."
"I don’t know exactly," said Sean. "But something."
She studied him for a moment with the evaluating quality that never entirely went away. "How do you know these things."
"I am a man that has a lot of secrets" said Sean simply.
She smiled and kissed Sean on his cheeks, put her jacket on properly, picked up her bag.
She stopped at the kitchen doorway and looked back and Said "Can’t wait to see you again Mr Handsome"
She waved Sean Goodbye , Sean waved back and then she turned towards the door and walked out.
—----
Sean sat in the kitchen for a while after she left.
Makima came back in from the hallway, looked at him, read the room in one second the way she always did.
She sat down across from him.
She looked at his face for a moment. Then she smiled, slow and warm and entirely real.
"She kissed you," said Makima.
Sean looked at her. "You were listening."
"I came back two minutes before she left," said Makima. "I heard exactly enough." She held his gaze with the expression she had when she’d made peace with something and meant it. "I assumed she would eventually. She’s very direct."
"She is," said Sean.
Makima was quiet for a moment. Looking at the table. Then at him.
"Sean," she said.
"Yeah."
"I’m okay with it," she said. "With her and any other girl you will have in the future" She held his gaze steadily. "I know what your life looks like. I’ve known since the beginning. I decided a long time ago that what we have is worth what it costs." She paused. "I don’t say that because I have to. I say it because it’s true and because you deserve to hear it directly rather than have me pretend the question doesn’t exist."
Sean looked at her across the kitchen table
"Makima," he said.
"But," she said, and something shifted in her expression, the warmth becoming something more specific, a smile that had an edge of certainty in it that was entirely her. "I am first." She said it simply. Not possessively. Just as a fact she was stating the way she stated all facts, directly and without apology. "Whatever else exists. I am first."
Sean held her gaze.
"You are first," he said.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she leaned across the table and kissed him. Not brief. The unhurried version, the one that carried everything she’d just said and didn’t need to say any of it again.
When she pulled back she was still smiling.
"Good," she said. "Now help me with the dishes."
Sean stood up and carried the cups to the sink and they washed up together the way they always did, the easy domestic rhythm of it, the building settled around them.
"She’s going to be good," said Makima, handing him the first cup to dry. "Mia. At the law thing."
"Yes," said Sean.
"Elena is going to like her," said Makima.
"I know," said Sean.
"You already know what’s going to happen," said Makima. Not a complaint. Just an observation.
"Sometimes," said Sean.
"Does it ever surprise you," she said. "When something goes differently."
"Yes," he said. "Sometimes."
"Good," said Makima. "That’s the part worth paying attention to."
She handed him the last cup.
He dried it and put it away and looked out the window at the building’s street, the evening fully arrived now, the city doing its Tuesday things entirely without reference to anything that had happened inside this kitchen in the last hour.
His phone showed one new notification.
He looked at it.
[Mia Jeon — Favorability: 68]
[Note: Fourth slot parameters are being calculated.]
[The system is observing.]
He put his phone in his pocket.
Looked at Makima drying her hands on the kitchen towel.
Looked at the flowers on the counter.
Looked at the window.
And he thought about all the specific unremarkable remarkable things that made up the shape of the life he was building in this timeline, the second chance version, the one that was louder with good things than the first one had been.
"Come and sit down," said Makima. "I made tea."
"You’ve made a lot of tea today," said Sean.
"Today required a lot of tea," said Makima.
He sat.
She sat across from him.
=====
Author Note
Hello its author here , thanks for reading ,this marks the end of this current arc , next Chapter is going to be a new arc , thanks for reading , i will try my best to make the next arc far enjoyable and interesting than the past arcs , thanks again, and please i would be grateful if you can please gift me golden tickets and power stones , it helps support the book.