I sat down on the steps of the safehouse and patted the spot beside me.

Zero raised an eyebrow but came and sat anyway, tucking one knee up against her chest, the smell of brick dust and her sweat and the faintly sweet thing her hair always had going on hitting me at the same time.

’Side effect of dating someone who can level walls. The sweat smells nice. Man, am I such a pervert that the smell of my girlfriend is turning me on?’

"Alright," I said, ignoring my useless thoughts. "Storytime."

"Mm."

So I told her.

I told her all of it. About waking up on Earth that morning and calling the only person I had on that side, my aunt... Mom’s best friend, not blood, important note, I clarified, because Zero’s eyebrow had done something dangerous, and how Mira was, by the way, not a normal aunt.

Mira ran a significant portion of the city’s underworld. She had a man named Renner who could move gold through private collectors at an eight percent commission. Mira had taken one look at a five-kilo bar over lamb chops and quoted eight hundred thousand USD for it without blinking.

Zero’s other eyebrow joined the first one. "That seems like a lot."

I nodded. "It is. Previously, I only used to earn around four thousand dollars."

Zero blinked in surprise. "Babe, you’re so rich then."

"I know, right?" I grinned at her. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"Of course, you deserve all of that."

I kept going and told her about Renner walking into the back office, examining the bar, calling it preserved gold, slipping it into his jacket, and walking out without a single piece of paper in either direction.

I told her about the three hundred thousand dollar bonus he’d handed me for goodwill. I told her how Mira had then driven me forty minutes out of the city to a colony called Riverstone Park, where the houses had koi ponds and the lawns had paid grass guys, and how she had bought — loaned, I corrected, because that mattered to me — me a one point three million dollar place with a swimming pool that backed onto a river.

Zero was very quiet through all of this. She watched me the way she watched a zombie clear a corner. Listening, fully focused.

I got to the pool.

I told her about the agent thinking I was Mira’s kept boy, about Mira playing along because it amused her. I told her about Mira slipping on a wet flagstone and me yanking her wrist and us both going in.

I told her about the kiss.

I didn’t dress it up. There was a moment in the water and a moment in her mouth tasting faintly like wine, and a moment her hand was on my chest and another one where it was lower than that, and I told her all of it because Zero had asked for everything and because lying to her felt physically wrong, in a way that surprised me a little.

When I finished, she was quiet for maybe five seconds. Then she asked, "Do you like her?"

I let out a breath. "Yeah. I do."

"As a person, or—"

"Both. As a person, definitely. As a..." I gestured vaguely at the air. "She’s beautiful, Zero. I’m not going to pretend she isn’t. She’s very beautiful, and she’s smart, and she’s terrifying in a way that’s, uh, doing some things to me, frankly. I really have a thing for insane women. And she’s been quietly looking out for me since long ago. I don’t know how to not like her."

"Will you be with her, then?"

I thought about it.

"That depends on her, not me. I’m pretty sure she likes me back. The kiss wasn’t a mistake on her end; she made that clear. But she’s a thirty-six-year-old who watched me grow up calling her Aunty, and I think she’s going to want to take her time figuring out if she’s actually going to do this, and I’m going to let her take that time. So... maybe. Probably. I’d like to."

Zero nodded once, like she was filing it.

Then she leaned over and grabbed the front of my shirt and kissed me. Deep. Tongue and teeth and one of her hands sliding up the back of my neck into my hair, holding me in place. Long enough that I lost track of which lung was supposed to be working.

When she pulled back, her forehead rested against mine.

"Good answer," she whispered.

"...Was there a wrong one?" I asked weakly.

"Yes. Lying. Even a little. I would have known, and I would have been very annoyed."

’Bullet, dodged. Reward, generous. Brain, melted.’

Was there an AI in my brain? Because my thoughts were turning mechanical.

"Noted."

She stood up and stretched her arms overhead, the undershirt riding up just enough that my brain stopped working a second time in two minutes. Damn it. She’s so beautiful, and her boobs—

"Feed me," she said.

"...Yes, ma’am." I chuckled. "That was a payment for the food?"

She smiled mischievously. "Perhaps. I can show you more."

And that gave me enough motivation.

...

The kitchen in the safehouse was small but clean. I had brought a cooler recently with most of the basics — flour, butter, eggs, two onions, garlic, a chunk of decent cheese, half a loaf of fresh bread, and the most important ingredient of all, real spices that hadn’t been sealed in a vault for years.

I made grilled cheese, three of them, with caramelized onions folded into the cheese and a little garlic butter brushed on the outsides of the bread.

It was a war crime, in the best way.

Zero watched me cook from the counter, chin propped on her palm, and made absolutely no effort to hide that she was staring.

"What?"

"You have very good hands," she said, smiling.

I pretended not to notice the hidden meaning. "Thank you."

"For cooking."

"...Sure."

"For other things, also."

I almost dropped the spatula and sighed. "Zero."

"What. I’m hungry. I’m allowed to think about both kinds of hungry." Zero showed me a pure, innocent face.

’I am going to die in this kitchen, and they will find me with garlic butter on the spatula and a smile on my face.’