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Chapter 14 The Choice
Chapter 14 The Choice
In October a hotel project in Singapore came looking. The money was large. The period was four months. The client named Fang Qitong and wanted her to fly over and be stationed on site. The terms were good enough that even Xiao Pei went silent after he heard them. Fang Qitong forwarded the email to her private inbox. That night, when she came home, she did not say it at the first moment. She showered first. She ate first. She watched first while Zhou Yu set a newly made small table lamp on her nightstand. The light was warm. The edge went dark. It was exactly the kind she wanted.
"It's good," she said.
"A sample lamp." He gathered the cord. "If you don't like it, I'll change it. You said little today. Is it the email? Xiao Pei messaged me. He's panicked, and he doesn't dare ask you. I can not ask. But if you want to say it, I'll listen."
She looked at the lamp and suddenly felt the choice had already been made inside her body. It only still had to be said to two people. One was herself. One was him.
"Singapore. Four months," she said. "The money is very good. When it's done the resume will look better. Duan Fei is in that city too. The project doesn't sit next to him, but the circles will touch. If I go, we spend four months across a flight. You can fly over. I can fly back. But flying back and forth is not a life. It's maintenance. Once I enter a project I disappear. You need to know that."
Zhou Yu sat on the edge of the bed. He held his palm toward the lamp for a while, as if warming it. "Do you want to go? Not whether you should. Whether you want to."
"I want that piece of work," she said honestly. "I don't much want those four months of being a person there. I don't want, in his city, to put myself back into a state where I can be evaluated. More important, I don't want to trade a project for the lamp you just set properly on my nightstand. Saying it out loud sounds as if I've thrown my future away. I haven't thrown it. On the Shanghai side there's a hotel renovation. The money is a cut smaller. The period is longer. But I can decide for myself. I want to take that one. I want to stay here. Staying here is not in order to watch you. My life is here. You are inside my life. The order is that. Don't get it backward and think you held me back."
He lifted his head. His eyes were a little red, and he was smiling. "I didn't get it backward. I heard you clearly. What you chose is your life. I happen to have been put into this life by you. This is the best thing I've heard. If one day you want to go to Singapore, you can go. I won't use a bedside lamp to kidnap you. I'll only ask whether you want to. If you say you don't, I'll help you do the light for the renovation hotel as well. If you say you do, I'll see you to the airport, and I'll keep the key safe."
She straddled his legs, held his head, and held it very hard. There was no immediate desire in the embrace. There was only a feeling of landing. A long time passed before she kissed him, and as they kissed the desire came anyway. Her body trusted this person. Trust ran hot.
"Today I want to do it under this lamp," she said. "Don't turn the lamp off. I want to look at your face and finish this choice."
The lamp was indeed not turned off. The warm light reached only half the bed, and it happened to show their bodies. She pushed him down and sat onto him slowly. When she sat all the way down, both of them looked at each other. Her hand pressed his chest and felt his heartbeat. She rose and fell very seriously, as if signing a document that did not need a lawyer. His hands traveled from her waist to her breasts, then to her face. His thumb brushed her mouth. She took his thumb into her mouth. Below, she held his cock. Both ways of holding were wet and tight. The sucking made him groan straight out, and he still looked at her.
"You're staying in Shanghai," he said. "I'm glad. The gladness isn't that I beat Singapore. It's that you'll come home at night. When you come home I can leave a light for you."
"Leave a light for me," she said, quickening a little. "And leave yourself for me too. When I'm going to come, hold me tight. I want to come while I'm being held."
He sat up and kept her straddling him. In this position he went deep. Their chests met. His arms locked her back. His mouth kissed her earlobe, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. Her clit ground his lower belly. The pleasure was dense and steady. When she came she was indeed held tight. The sound was muffled in the hollow of his shoulder. Her body shuddered in waves. Her walls gripped him until he came too. He swore a very good-sounding curse under his breath, drove to the deepest place, and came, and after he came he still did not let go. The lamp burned steady at the head of the bed. The edge went dark. In the middle was their sweat.
"On Monday I'll refuse Singapore," she said in his arms. "I may ache for ten minutes over the money. When the ache is done I'll go look at the renovation site. Will you come with me? Not as a boyfriend directing the site. As the person for the light. If they ask what we are, I won't hide anymore."
"I'll come," he said. "If they ask, I'll say I am your person, and I am the lamp on this project. Both sentences are true."
"Both sentences are true." She repeated it, then laughed. "I seem to be getting better and better at saying this kind of sentence that leaves no way back."
"You can leave one," he said, kissing her eyelid. "I will always leave you a way back. I just won't walk out on it myself."
That week she really did refuse Singapore. When Xiao Pei heard, he was sorry first, and then he let out a breath and said the renovation hotel was close to the studio, so at least overtime could end at home. Fang Qitong looked at this twenty-eight-year-old colleague and suddenly realized her choice was also giving the people beside her a kind of steadiness. At noon she bought him a coffee and explained nothing extra. In the afternoon she photographed the sample lamp by the bed, saved it in the project's inspiration folder, and named it with only two words: Kept.
