Knocking

The hallway light hummed like a distant insect, a thin strip of amber that painted the nursery door in a sleepy halo. My chest felt raw and full in a way that had nothing to do with fatigue; it was the kind of ache that gathered when we let the rest of the world lapse and focused all its weight on the two of us.

He closed the bedroom door behind us and the apartment tightened into a private dark. He moved toward me with that dangerous patience he kept like an heirloom—quiet, inevitable. His hands found my waist the way a tide finds the shore, insistent and familiar. I wanted the world to stop, not because I needed to escape it, but because I wanted to carve this moment into memory, dark and exact.

"Just tonight," I said before he could speak. The words came out brittle and soft at once.

He smiled in a way that made the lamp throw crooked shadows across his face. "Just tonight," he echoed, like a vow and a dare.

We fit together around the nights we've already given away—feedings, fever watches, the small wars over bedtime that felt like sieges when you were too tired to argue. Tonight we reclaimed a few stolen minutes and the air between us tasted like rain and late coffee. His mouth on mine stopped the world like a guillotine—not because it silenced everything, but because it made me choose where to put my breath.