A Knock at the Door (back to Joe’s pov)

The Jack and Coke in my hand’s barely even that anymore.

The ice is long gone—melted down to a sad, watered mess of sugar and regret. I nurse what’s left anyway, rolling the glass in my palm, watching the condensation crawl down the sides.

Dinner’s across the suite—half a steak congealing on the oversized plate, the fries going limp under the weight of their own grease. It was fine. Passable. Not like I tasted much of it anyway.

The suite around me is ridiculous. Too big. Too quiet. Too empty.

The view out the window is all neon and glass, Miami’s skyline flexing for someone who gives a damn. I don’t.

It’s after 1 a.m. and my brain won’t shut down. The weight behind my eyes hasn’t eased since I landed.

I hope Iris is at least getting some sleep. God knows she deserves it. The woman’s been juggling contracts, hotel bookings, and my pathetic attempts to play it cool since Emily left for Miami.

I glance at my phone. Checking for a missed call despite it never leaving my hand since I landed. I’d tried her earlier. Straight to voicemail. Could’ve been the battery. Could’ve been exhaustion.

She gets deep into work. So deep she forgets the world exists sometimes. I’m guilty of that too. But tonight… tonight it chews at me.

I open our last text thread.

The heart. The dumbass little eggplant. Her ROFL reply.

I can hear her laughter when I read it again. It’s faint, ghosted through the glow of the screen, but it’s there. That snorty little giggle she tries to hide. The soft rasp her voice gets when she’s overtired but trying to make me smile anyway.

I sit with it. Breathe through it. Sip the watered-down drink.

Then—

A knock.

It’s soft. But sharp enough to cut through the noise in my head.

My brow furrows. Who the hell has the audacity to knock on my door at 1 a.m.? A drunk guest? Room service mix-up? The wrong kind of mistake?

I down the last of the drink. Set the glass aside. Walk to the door.

The second I pull it open, I forget how to breathe.

Emily.

She’s standing there, hair a mess, flushed from travel, eyes glassy with exhaustion and adrenaline. She looks like she’s just run a marathon barefoot across the tarmac—but I swear to god, I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.

For a half-second, my brain glitches—convinced it’s a dream. A mirage. Some cruel projection my exhausted mind cooked up.

I don’t give it a chance to fade.

I pull her inside. Fast. ****. My hands gripping her arms, her waist, every inch of her as if she’s going to evaporate if I don’t anchor her down.

Her bag hits the floor. The door slams shut. My lips are on hers before either of us can think.

It’s not soft. It’s not polite. It’s months of distance, weeks of ache, days of pretending clawing their way out of me in one ****, gasping kiss.

Her hands fist in my shirt, nails dragging over my chest, anchoring herself to me with the same raw need. She tries to speak between kisses—stammering words tumbling over each other, her breath hot and frantic.

“I was… god—paperwork—conference room—Iris— Kansas-”

I don’t care. I can’t care. She’s here. That’s all that matters.

But her voice, shaky and bright, fights through the haze of us.

“I was drowning in legal files—then Kansas came on the speaker—Carry On My Wayward Son—” She laughs breathlessly against my mouth, her forehead pressing to mine. “It just… hit me. I couldn’t stay. I had to get to you.”

My pulse pounds against my ribs, my hands cupping her face, brushing tangled hair back so I can see her.

“And Iris?” I rasp.

“Moved a mountain,” she whispers, eyes shining with emotion. “I was at the airport in under an hour.”

The laugh that punches out of me is rough, choked, threaded with disbelief. I press my forehead to hers, kiss the corner of her mouth, her jaw, every trembling inch I can reach.

“You’re here,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “You’re actually here.”

She nods, her smile a messy, beautiful wreck of exhaustion and love.

“I’m here,” she echoes, her hands sliding under my shirt, her palms pressed flat to my chest, feeling my heart slam against her fingers.

It’s the only thing grounding me now.

The suite’s gone. The city’s gone. The ache, the tension, the empty bed—gone.

It’s just her. Us. The way it’s supposed to be.

We stay like that for a long moment—pressed together, breathing each other in, rediscovering what it feels like to belong in the same room again.

I close my eyes.

“I missed you,” I breathe into her hair, my voice raw.

She tilts her face up, smiling crooked through the tears threatening to spill.

“I know.”

And for the first time in days, the ache starts to ease.