Dawn's Night (V)

The Suite looked different when Andy and Dawn returned—like it had been repainted by a mischievous ghost with an eye for drama. The first clue was the couch pillows: they had all been piled up into a wobbly, lopsided tower that threatened collapse at any moment, balanced precariously on the coffee table. In the kitchen, Laura had contrived some form of castle-like structure out of interlocked forks and knives, with a lone spoon at the top, glittering even in the dim lighting of the Suite. A roll of toilet paper had been unspooled, like a royal carpet, from the tower of pillows to the castle of silverware, and from there, to the dining table. To the chairs: every single one of the dining set had been turned precisely backward, their backs facing the table in a perfect, parodic ring. On each seat, a large, glimmering ring of seashells had been propped like a crown, the curved lips of abalone and conch gleaming iridescent in the late-day light.

But the coup de grâce was the note, written in thick block letters and taped dead-center to the table:

YOUR THRONE AWAITS.

On the other side, a smiley face—two dots, a curved smile line—and Laura’s classic gotcha.

Dawn stopped just inside the doorway, her hand hovering midair as if she’d been interrupted by a power outage. “What—” she started, then lapsed into awe. “What even is this?”

Andy grinned, the kind of grin that’s half nostalgia, half “I can’t believe she did it again.” “That,” he said, “is a Laura Ashford signature move. She’s escalating.”

Dawn blinked, taking in the tableau, the shells, the deliberate absurdity of it all. She turned to Andy, eyebrows up. “I thought you were the prankster.”

He put a hand over his heart, feigning innocence. “Please. I’m strictly small-time. This is next-level.”

He stepped over the threshold and into the performance. The room felt staged, every chair a player awaiting its cue, the shells catching the light like jewels. He circled the table once, then plucked the note from its tape, holding it up for Dawn to read.

Dawn eyed the handwriting, then the chairs, then Andy. “Are we supposed to sit backwards? Is this, like, a psychological experiment?”

Andy snorted, then straightened one of the chairs and pulled it out for her with exaggerated gallantry. “Allow me to seat the lady of the house. Don’t forget your crown.”

He gestured to the circle of seashells, which was nearly the size of a salad plate and had been balanced on the seat with impossible precision. Dawn stared at it, weighing the options—then, with a solemn dignity, picked it up and set it atop her head, where it wobbled for a moment before settling into the cradle of her hair, between her bunny ears.

She looked at Andy. “Do I look ridiculous?”

“You look magnificent,” he said, meaning it. “Like a bunny girl who married into the wrong fairy tale.” He grinned. “All hail the Bunny Queen.”

Dawn grinned, all teeth. She slid into the chair, still holding the shell in place. “So,” she said, “what’s her angle? Is this a challenge? An invitation? Am I supposed to fight you for the throne?”

Andy shook his head, laughing. “No. This is… it’s how Laura shows she’s thinking of me. Or us. She gets these ideas—usually after something’s changed in her life, or she’s feeling out of place. When we were kids, she’d do stuff like this anytime things were weird at home. Like, if her parents had a fight, or if she’d bombed a test, she’d prank the neighborhood. Not for ****, just so she’d know people were watching. It was her way of not disappearing.”

Dawn’s smile softened, the edge of mockery fading. “She’s turning the Suite into her own stage.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “And now she’s got an audience. Plus there’s two of her, actually, which is just… unfair.” In the back of his head, he could still sense Laura’s distress and wished he knew what had happened. But he knew Laura, and he knew she needed time alone to process, before he could approach her and help, even if only by listening.

Dawn laughed, the sound a ripple across the shells, drawing him out of his thoughts. She reached out and flicked the rim of Andy’s own chair, sending its shell clattering to the floor. “I think she wants you to sit, too. You can’t be king if you don’t claim your seat.”

Andy gave her a mock bow, then took the chair at her right hand, scooping up the shell and setting it on his head with the solemnity of a coronation. The shell slid off at once, bouncing off his shoulder and rolling under the table. Dawn stifled a giggle, and he let himself laugh with her, the moment crackling with the kind of shared absurdity that’s hard to fake.

They sat together, facing the table but with the ghostly impression of being turned outward, like conspirators at a secret council. For a while, neither spoke. The sunlight through the glass doors painted the shells in a shifting pattern, the ocean beyond glimmering with the same faint blue as the marker ink on Laura’s note.

Andy leaned back, the wood of the chair pressing into his spine, and tried to imagine what Laura had felt when she’d set all this up. Was it joy? Mischief? Loneliness? Or maybe something closer to hope—a way to be present in a room she wasn’t sure she belonged to yet.

He felt Dawn watching him, and for a moment, the world stilled.

“Are you okay?” she asked, voice gentle.

He nodded, then glanced at her, the shadow of his old ache visible but not sharp. “Yeah. It’s just—she’s relearning how to take up space. Even if it’s weird, I love it.”

Dawn reached across the table, threading her fingers through his. “You can tell her that,” she said.

“I do. I will.” He squeezed her hand, feeling the warmth of her palm, the solidness of her grip.

They sat like that for a long time, the two of them ringed by backward chairs and crowned shells, the whole Suite transformed by the audacity of a single joke. It felt less like a prank and more like a promise—a way of saying, I’m here, I see you, I’m not going to let go this time.

Eventually, the last light faded, and the room glowed with the afterimage of laughter and something softer beneath. Andy let go of Dawn’s hand, but not before giving it one last squeeze.

He cleared his throat, finding his balance again. “You want to cook?” he asked. “Or should we order in and risk another surprise?”

Dawn smiled, her face lit from inside. “Let’s cook,” she said. “But only if you promise to wear the shell crown until dinner.”

Andy grinned, reaching under the table for the runaway crown. “I’ll wear it as long as you do.”

The kitchen was always at its best in the evening, when the light went syrup-thick and the tiles underfoot held the last warmth of the day. Andy rolled up his sleeves, still wearing the salt-stiff crown of shell on his head, and found the usual plethora of ingredients spread out across the counters—herbs in individual containers, bundles of onions, a bowl of limes, freshly cut and still glistening.

Dawn moved with the confident economy of someone who’d prepped a hundred family meals for a crowd with too many opinions and not enough gratitude. She grabbed a chef’s knife, tested its balance in her palm, and started slicing onions with the speed and precision of a magician at a birthday party. The chopped pieces fell in a neat row, their acrid perfume filling the air.

Andy took his cue, retrieving a heavy pot from the rack and setting it to heat with a dash of olive oil. “What’s the menu tonight?” he asked.

Dawn smiled without looking up. “I’m thinking arroz con pollo. But with extra veggies so we can pretend it’s healthy.”

He nodded. “Should I de-seed the peppers?”

“Yeah. And maybe dice up that zucchini, too?”

He set to work, falling into rhythm beside her. The sound of their chopping layered with the sizzle from the pan, the kitchen filling with a scent that could make a person nostalgic for a home they never knew.

Dawn’s hair, tied back with a faded red scrunchie, swayed in time with her movements. She kept her ears alert, twitching when she heard him make a mistake or drop a stem in the wrong place, but never once corrected him. Instead, she hummed—an old song, maybe a lullaby—soft enough that it blended with the hiss of the onion and the click of knife on cutting board.

Andy liked this, the not-quite silence of two people working in concert. It reminded him of Sunday mornings at his mom’s kitchen table, the reliable peace that only happened when everyone was too busy to argue.

He lined up the peppers, took a moment to admire the colors, and said, “You ever think about running a restaurant?”

Dawn snorted, half amusement and half pride. “Only if I could fire all the customers after two weeks.”

Andy grinned. “Is that an option?”

Dawn shrugged, scooping her onions into the pot. “Should be. But I’d rather cook for people I like.”

She added the garlic, then the chicken, stirring with a practiced wrist. The aroma hit Andy all at once: sharp, sweet, and instantly mouthwatering.

He moved behind her to fetch a can of tomatoes, the space between them shrinking in the close quarters. She didn’t move away, just nudged him with her hip and said, “Watch the heat. It sticks if you don’t keep stirring.”

He obliged, taking the wooden spoon and scraping the bottom of the pot with slow, deliberate care. Dawn’s hand hovered just above his, not quite touching, as if to correct him if he veered off-course. But she didn’t need to. They added the rice, the stock, the peas. As the pot simmered, Dawn leaned on the counter, arms crossed, eyes on the slow dance of bubbles. “I always loved cooking. It feels right. Like, I get to make something, and then I get to see so many people be happy about it. It’s not much, but it’s mine.”

The timer on the stove ticked down, the air thickening with anticipation. Dawn set the table—chairs still backward, shells in place—and gestured for Andy to sit. He followed, the crown now perched at a jaunty angle, and watched as Dawn ladled steaming heaps of arroz con pollo onto the plates.

They ate slowly, the way you do when there’s no hurry, every bite layered with flavor and the low-grade joy of something earned. Conversation drifted between practicalities—should they add more salt, was the rice too wet, did the peas need another minute—and little memories from the day. The shells caught the candlelight, throwing weird shadows on the walls, but neither of them bothered to move them aside.

It was halfway through the meal that Andy felt it again, stronger this time—a thin, cold thread of worry, winding through his chest like a sneaky draft in a well-built house. Not panic. Not urgency. Just a persistent wrongness that refused to be ignored. It was the kind of feeling that had no clear cause, but enough weight to demand attention.

He tried to push it aside, but Dawn’s gaze caught him at once. “You okay?” she asked, spoon paused mid-air.

He hesitated, unsure how to explain. He didn’t want to lie, and he didn’t want to overreact. “Just… distracted, I guess.”

She set down her spoon, all business now. “Is it me? Did I mess something up?”

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not you. It’s—” He struggled to find the words, then gave up and just said it. “It’s Laura. I think she’s upset.”

Dawn blinked, then nodded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing to say. “Did something happen?”

Andy frowned, searching his memory. “Not that I know of. It’s just—when we were kids, Laura and I, we could always tell if the other was in trouble. Even if we were blocks apart, or at home, or in different schools. He paused, the memory settling heavy and familiar. “Sometimes we’d just know. And I’d show up at her door and she’d be crying, or vice versa.”

He picked at his food, the story bringing a strange mix of fondness and old pain. “I haven’t felt it in years. Not since she died.” The word still felt wrong in his mouth. “Not even since she came back. But tonight, it’s back. Strong enough that I can’t pretend I’m imagining it.”

Dawn reached across the table, laying her hand on his. “Do you want to go see her?”

Andy looked up, surprised by how quickly she offered, and loving her for it. He considered it seriously—felt the pull of it, the old instinct to drop everything and go. “I do,” he admitted. “But I’m not going to. Not yet.”

She didn’t pull her hand away. “Why?”

“She never liked it when I showed up the second something was wrong,” he said quietly. It made her feel like she didn’t get to have her feelings on her own terms.” He managed a small, rueful smile. “She always wanted a little space first. Time to decide what she was feeling before anyone tried to fix it.”

He took a breath. “If I go now, it’ll be because I can’t stand the waiting. Not because she asked for me. And it will make her feel like I still think she’s thirteen.”

Dawn absorbed that, her thumb brushing once over his knuckles. “So you’re trusting her to come to you.”

“Yes,” Andy said, the answer immediate. “Or to someone else, like Sam or Marissa or Claire, if need be. And I’ll be here when she does.” He glanced up. “I’ll check on her in the morning. If she doesn’t find me first.”

Dawn squeezed his fingers. “If you change your mind, you should go.”

He nodded, the gesture grateful. “Thank you.”

She sat back, her face thoughtful. “Is this like what you have with Claire? Where you know each other’s feelings?”

He shook his head. “Not really. With Claire, it’s like a channel is open all the time—always tuned to the same station. With Laura, it’s more like a flare. A ping when something’s wrong. I think… I think she knows I feel it, too.”

Dawn smiled, her whole demeanor softening. “It’s kind of beautiful, you know? Like, even after everything, you two still have a way to find each other.”

Andy felt the truth of it, the old ache twisting a little less sharply. “Yeah,” he said, quiet. “It is.”

They finished the meal in companionable silence, the Suite warm with candlelight and the lingering scent of garlic and rice. Andy’s worry didn’t disappear, but it softened under Dawn’s care, the pressure of her hand a steady anchor.

When they cleared the plates, Dawn handed Andy the dish towel, grinning. “Your turn,” she said. “House rules.”

He laughed, accepting the chore. “Yes, ma’am.”

They worked side by side, the easy rhythm of the kitchen settling around them like a blanket. When the last dish was clean and the counters wiped down, Andy turned to Dawn, the worry receding into the background.

He took her hands, holding them steady. “I’m sorry for bringing all this up on your night,” he said.

She smiled, not letting go. “You didn’t. This is what I signed up for. I want all of it—the happy, the weird, the messy parts, too.”

He squeezed her hands, the moment feeling both light and impossibly solid. “You sure?”

Dawn’s answer was a kiss, soft and certain, the kind that leaves no room for doubt.

When she pulled back, her eyes were bright. “Let’s go look at the stars,” she said, voice low.

Andy nodded, following her to the balcony, the night air cool and clear. Behind them, the Suite glowed with the afterimage of dinner, the shells still perched on the backward chairs, silent and shining in the candlelight. And as they stepped outside, Andy felt the world settle into something almost peaceful.

The worry was still there, but for now, it could wait.

The night air was a living thing on the crescent balcony—warm, close, carrying the hush of waves from the dark below. The sky was smeared with low cloud, only a few faint stars peeking through the haze. Andy leaned on the glass railing, elbows beside Dawn’s, the two of them looking out toward the black sweep of ocean and the distant, pulsing light at the end of the jetty.

Dawn was quiet at first, arms folded tight to her now-significant chest. Andy let the silence stretch, filling the air with the small, necessary sounds of the world: the hush of wind, the occasional laughter drifting up from the patio, the tick of cooling metal as the hotel roof shed the day’s heat.

Eventually Dawn spoke, her voice low and level, like she was tuning it to the quiet of the night. “Abuela would have loved it here,” she said. “She would have found a way to make friends with everyone by the first morning.”

Andy smiled, picturing it. “You told me a bit about her. She sounds like a legend.”

Dawn laughed, a single breath. “She was. She kept the whole family together, even when nobody wanted to be in the same room. When I was little, I’d go to her apartment on weekends. I’d walk in and she’d be in the kitchen, cooking with the window open and singing old boleros. She’d pretend to scold me for coming in with dirty shoes, but I always ended up in her lap by the end of the afternoon. She used to call me mija, because she had several grandsons, but I was her only grand-daughter.”

She looked down at her hands, twisting her fingers into the hem of her sleeve. “I know everyone’s got an origin story, but with her it was… different. She never went to school past the sixth grade, but she knew how to do anything—sew, fix a radio, bribe the parish priest to ignore her gambling, you name it. She’d tell me about growing up in Puerto Rico, how she’d steal mangoes from the neighbors and get chased by their dogs, how she was always hungry but never let anyone else go without. She wanted a huge family, but two of her babies died before they could even talk. Only my mom and Titi Juana made it to adulthood.”

Andy nodded, letting the story spool out. “She sounds tough.”

“She was.” Dawn’s eyes shimmered in the blue light. “But she was soft, too. She’d let me lick the bowl every time she baked, even though I’d always get it all over my face. She taught me to cook by making me her ‘sous chef.’ I was the only kid in the class who knew what piloncillo was, or could cut plantains without losing a finger. I always thought that was normal, until I got older and realized most people just microwaved dinner and called it a day.”

She leaned on the glass, gaze searching the horizon for something only she could see. “After my mom died, Abuela came over every day for weeks. She’d cook for us, clean the house, read to Sebastian until he fell asleep. She couldn’t fix my dad, or bring my mom back, but she made it feel like things were still possible. Like the world could be okay, even if it was broken.”

The wind lifted, and Dawn tucked her hair behind her ear, the motion automatic. “Her apartment was the only place I felt… light. Like I could be a kid, even if just for a few hours. It smelled like soffrito, all the time. When things at home were bad, she’d let me sleep on her couch and watch telenovelas until midnight. I loved that couch more than anything. It smelled like cloves and Lysol and the little orange candies she hid in the seat cushions.”

Andy watched her face, the way her smile would come and go like weather. He wanted to say something, but nothing felt right except to listen.

Dawn’s voice got softer. “She died last year. Didn’t tell anyone she was sick, just kept living like she had all the time in the world. I was at work when my dad called. I didn’t cry at the funeral—too busy trying to keep my brothers from falling apart. I only cried when I went to her apartment the last time and realized I’d never smell those orange candies again, or see her sitting by the window, or hear her laugh at the dumb jokes on Sabado Gigante.”

A tear slipped down Dawn’s cheek, and she didn’t bother to wipe it away. “I know it’s dumb, but sometimes I feel like if I do a good enough job—if I take care of my family, and feed everyone, and never let things fall apart—she’ll come back. Or at least she’ll know I learned what she was trying to teach me.” Her voice wavered, almost lost to the hush. “But most days, I just feel like I’m talking to a ghost.”

Andy touched her shoulder, careful and light, a grounding touch. “It’s not dumb,” he said. “She’d be proud of you.”

Dawn let out a shaky breath, half a laugh, half a sigh. “I hope so. Sometimes I worry I’m just pretending.”

They stood that way for a while, the ocean whispering below. Andy watched the memory flicker in Dawn’s eyes, saw the way it mingled with the night and made her seem at once older and younger than she was.

He said, “Do you ever talk to her now?”

Dawn shrugged, but her eyes were distant. “Sometimes. When it’s quiet. Or when I’m cooking, and I mess something up. I’ll hear her voice in my head, teasing me. Sometimes it makes me happy, but mostly it just hurts.”

She bit her lip, looking away. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to unload all this. It’s just… being here, doing this with you, it’s like—I don’t know. It feels right. Like I get to have a piece of what she wanted for me. I just wish she could know how much I miss her.”

Andy didn’t reply; instead, he enveloped Dawn in a slow, encompassing hug, every motion deliberate and unhurried. His arms rested around her lower back, the press of her body against him so familiar now that it felt less like an embrace and more like a return. Dawn came willingly, her cheek finding the hollow of his shoulder, her hands sliding under his arms to clutch at the fabric of his shirt. There was no performance to it—no expectation, no seduction—just the honest gravity of two people holding each other up.

She shivered, the kind of tremor that came from somewhere deep, an old pocket of grief cracking open like a fault line under his hands. Andy did what he could: he held her steady, and let the quake run its course. They stayed like that, pressed close as the world beyond the Suite faded, letting each other’s warmth be the only temperature that mattered. The longer they lingered, the more Andy’s mind drifted back to every woman he’d ever tried to save by loving her, every woman who’d ever needed him to just shut the hell up and hold her like this. There was a kind of penance in it, but also a kind of grace.

At last her breathing slowed, the tremor settling into a soft, regular rhythm. Andy loosened his grip just enough to look down at her, but not so much that she could fall away. In that quiet, he realized how strange it was to be the one offering comfort instead of seeking it. He wished he could do more for this woman—this incandescent, impossible person who spent her days making the hotel’s harem laugh, patching up their bruised feelings, and smoothing over every weirdness with a joke or a hug or (incredibly) a spectacular flan. He wished he could have met her mother, her Abuela, the whole constellation of women who built Dawn from scratch and sent her into the world with a pocketful of recipes, a heart as large as Chicago, and a talent for forgiveness. He remembered the scene Marissa had witnessed in the Garden of Glass, Dawn cooking her grandmother's recipe for the first time after her ****. He wished he could do something so that Dawn could know her grandmother was proud of her, because somehow, he was certain she was.

A gust of wind curled over the balcony, prickling his neck. For a second, Andy thought he heard a door somewhere—maybe the Suite’s sliding glass, maybe just the memory of a door, from the house he grew up in. That was when the air changed. Not just a shift in the wind, not just a drift of cloud cover or the usual nighttime chill, but a total flip: as if the molecules themselves had gotten their orders mixed up, and suddenly, the air belonged to another world entirely.

At first, it was just a scent—nothing dramatic, nothing miraculous, merely a whiff of something familiar but out of place. Garlic, browning in oil. The tang of green bell pepper, sliced thick. Onion, so soft it surrendered to the knife. The air outside the Suite’s crescent balcony was heavy and salt-laced, but riding high above the ocean and the night was the thick, unmistakable perfume of a kitchen where love had been the only recipe. It wasn’t the clean, clipped notes of a restaurant or the background hum of a microwave dinner: it was the air of a hallway outside a lived-in apartment, dense with intent, the signature scent of a woman who believed there was no greater proof of love than feeding someone until they had to unbutton their jeans.

Andy’s brain tripped on the suddenness of it. For a moment, he forgot the glass of the balcony, forgot the curve of the ocean, forgot even Dawn pressed against him, all his attention funneling into that impossible smell. It was layered—beneath the garlic were herbs, oregano and cilantro maybe, and a sharp, fleeting note of lime. There was something sweet and illicit, like brown sugar stolen by the pinch, and below it all, a base of onions caramelizing long past the point of sensible. He could see it: the battered cast-iron, the big red spoon, the rows of Tupperware waiting to be filled for grandchildren and neighbors and any stranger who wandered in off the stoop.

But if Andy noticed it first, Dawn was slower to register. She was still tucked into his shoulder, shoulders shivering in the wake of her confession, her face pressed so close he could feel the damp heat of her breath. She was not ready—no one would be ready—for what came next.

The second wave was stronger. It rolled in like a living thing, a pulse of home-cooking so intense that Andy felt his own eyes water, as if the ghost of a grandmother had hacked the hotel’s HVAC to season the air itself. He felt movement before he saw it: Dawn’s nose wrinkled, a small animal twitch, the instinctive recoil of someone whose memory has just been ambushed by the impossible. She pulled back just enough to look up at him, searching his face for the trick, the prank, the rational explanation.

“Do you smell that?” she asked, very quietly. The words were barely more than a vibration on his shirt, as if she was afraid of being overheard by the dead.

Andy nodded, not trusting himself to say anything more. “Yeah. I do.”

Dawn blinked, once, twice. Her eyes were glass-clear, the irises swimming in a brown so intense it seemed to have its own light source. She looked left and right, like a dog who realizes it’s lost the scent trail. “That’s…” Her voice caught, wobbling between a laugh and a gasp. “That’s her kitchen. That’s really… it’s really her.”

The words seemed to animate the air. The scent thickened, wrapping around their bodies like a shawl. There were new notes now—cinnamon, slow-cooked and a little burnt, the sharpness of clove, the echo of orange zest. Andy’s stomach growled on cue, but it was drowned out by the more primal, animal reaction of Dawn’s body: her hands flew to her face, fingers splayed, a gesture so helpless and genuine that it made him want to cry on her behalf.

She wasn’t alone in feeling it. Andy’s mind pinged back through every dinner he could remember, every Sunday meal at his own mother’s table, but none of those seemed to compare to the specificity of this moment. It was a memory made real. And then, in a way that defied all expectation, it got more real.

The change was gradual, a shifting of… not light, exactly, nor temperature, but the density of the air itself. Andy felt a pressure on his cheek, a gentle but insistent weight, as if someone had reached across the years and cupped his face to better look at him. Dawn gasped, and he saw, he distinctly saw, her hair being smoothed over by the gentle caress of an unseen loving hand, the skin on her forehead dimpling slightly from the brush of lips against her hairline, so kind and deliberate Dawn almost sobbed from the shock of it.

He looked at her. She was completely still, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open in a silent O of wonder and something like awe. It occurred to Andy that she might be reliving a memory, or else she was just as startled as he was by the interruption of the supernatural into what had previously been a very ordinary evening. But her face was not afraid, not exactly. Reverent, maybe, or stunned. Andy reached for her hands, uncurling her fingers gently from her cheeks, and she let him.

Then, in the middle of that stilled world, a voice appeared. It wasn’t a sound, not in the way a song or a doorbell is a sound. It was more like a vibration in the chest, a resonance that pulsed through the bones. The language was Spanish, but the meaning was legible even to Andy, who had hacked his way through only high-school vocabulary. “Te amo, mija. Siempre estoy cuidándote.” The syllables were slow and rounded, as if spoken from behind a wall of sleep. And then, just as a shiver ran down his spine, a second phrase: “Nunca olvides que eres mi joya. Mi niña hermosa.”

I love you, my child. I am always watching over you. Never forget that you are my treasure, my beautiful girl.

Dawn’s body buckled. Not collapsed to the floor, not drama-queen fainting, but a tremor that moved through her from root to branch, dropping her center of gravity until Andy had to catch her, arms around her waist, holding her up. She sobbed once, sharp and loud, and then all was silent except for the faint, continuous hum of the wind and the distant, patient rhythm of the ocean.

All at once, Andy understood why she’d never really lost it at the funeral; why this woman, so capable and so practiced at smoothing over the pain of others, had refused to let herself come undone. He realized how much she had needed this, not just the abstraction of comfort or the vague sense that her Abuela would “always be with her,” but the actual, embodied, sensory certainty that she was being loved right now, in this place, as intensely as if the woman were standing beside her.

But the visitation wasn’t over—not yet. The smell persisted, cycling through new phases. Café con leche, sweet and thick. Plantains, fried in hot oil. The rich, chocolate tang of mole, the faint undercurrent of something Andy would only later realize was rum. If he hadn’t been holding Dawn, he might have collapsed himself—so overwhelming was the **** of the memory, so total the illusion that he was standing in a world built out of food and laughter and the unconditional love of a woman who knew how to make it all feel like it would last forever.

And then, for both of them, a final act. The air grew very still, the scents drawing together into a single, perfect chord, and then a warmth—dry, weightless, but real—wrapped itself around Dawn’s shoulders. Andy felt it too, a soft press at the base of his neck, as if he were being hugged by a person who no longer had arms but still remembered what hugging felt like.

Within that warmth, Andy heard the last words, the ones that would echo for days: “No estés triste, mi amor. Yo estoy aquí.” Don’t be sad, my love. I am here.

And then it was gone. The air cleared in a single, gentle exhale, like the world itself letting go. Andy lowered Dawn to the balcony floor, cradling her as if she were a child, and for a long time neither of them said anything at all.

Dawn’s jaw clenched, mouth working as she tried to swallow words that wouldn’t come. When they finally did, it was with a **** that took Andy by surprise—a sob, ragged and raw, the kind that made every muscle in her body shake. But there was no shame in it, no apology, just honest relief. She wept—really, truly wept—for the first time since stepping into the Harem Hotel, and maybe for the first time since her Abuela died at all.

Andy could do nothing but hold her, anchoring himself to the present through sheer **** of will. The taste of salt lingered on his lips where her tears had grazed him, the fine tremor in her back translating perfectly into his own chest. He clung to her with both arms, not to possess but to steady, to bracket her grief in a boundary that said: You do not fall alone. In the lamplight, Dawn’s hair glistened with a sheen of tears and ocean mist, and Andy stroked it as if the gesture might soothe the ancient wound spilling from her heart.

He lost all sense of time. The world had shrunk to the span of the balcony and the slow unwinding of Dawn’s voice, raw as an exposed nerve. She sobbed until her ribs ached; then, through sheer exhaustion, her breathing leveled out, and in that fragile lull, Andy could feel the pounding of his own pulse where their bodies met. Occasionally he murmured, but the words were nonsense: “Hey. I’ve got you. I know.” Sometimes it was just a hum, a vibration in his chest meant to mask the fact that he, too, was on the verge of breaking wide open.

When the hurricane of grief finally calmed, Dawn’s body went limp against him, her head tucked under his chin. For a long time, she simply shook, overwhelmed by the aftershocks. Andy kept stroking her hair, unsure if he was comforting her or himself. The strange perfume of her Abuela’s kitchen still hung in the air, but now it was fainter, folded into the background, like a memory that had been wrung out and set gently on the sill to dry.

After a while, Dawn shifted, rubbing her eyes on his shirt like a child **** to erase the evidence. The effort only made her laugh, a brittle, hiccuping sound that broke the tension. Andy felt it vibrate against him, a fragile promise of return to normalcy—or at least to the version of normal that existed in the wake of something like this.

Dawn’s voice, when it returned, was so small Andy almost missed it. “Gracias, Abuela.” The syllables were soft enough to be mistaken for prayer.

Andy tightened his embrace, wishing to pass something through his skin—a reassurance, or perhaps just the simple fact of solidarity. “She heard you,” he said, and it was the easiest thing in the world to believe. No, more than that: he knew, with a bone-deep certainty that nearly frightened him. It had not been a conjuring trick: he knew Dawn's Abuela had been here, in spirit, even if only for a few moments.

For a while, neither of them moved. The world outside their bubble was impossibly quiet, the ticking of the wind and the gentle lapping of the tide far below the only witnesses to their little miracle. Andy found himself memorizing the moment: the exact curve of the moonlight on her cheek, the uneven trails of tears zigzagging down her jaw, the way her shoulders finally relaxed into his arms as if conceding, at last, that she was allowed to be held.

When the silence became companionable rather than loaded, Andy became acutely aware of the lingering scents: the last echoes of cinnamon and coffee, the faintest ghost of cilantro, the low warmth of caramelized onion. He inhaled deeply, and the air felt different—thinner, lighter, as if the residue of Dawn’s grief had lifted some heavy lid from the world.

Dawn pulled away, just a fraction. She looked up at Andy, her eyes red but unguarded, as if a film had been peeled away and left her shining and unfinished. “I used to think she’d be disappointed,” she said, her words careful, as though testing their own reality. “That I’d never be good enough, or that I’d let her down just by being…” She gestured up and down her own body, a vague pantomime for all the things she’d ever been insecure about: her job, her choices, the inexorable difference between who she was and who she thought she should be.

Andy let the silence do the heavy lifting, trusting that if he interrupted, it would only break the spell. He’d never seen her so open. It made him ache, the way she was both a fortress and a ruin, all at once.

“But she wasn’t,” Dawn continued, her voice steadier now, as if she’d drawn courage from the very act of voicing it. “She isn’t. She’s still here, isn’t she?”

The question didn’t need an answer, but Andy gave her one anyway. “She is. She’s with you.”

The words, so plain and unadorned, seemed to do the trick. Dawn smiled, not the broad, performative smile she sometimes wore as camouflage, but a small, unfiltered thing that looked like the first step out of a cave.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and the **** of her gratitude landed between them like a third presence. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and reached for Andy’s hand on purpose. Her grip was firm, different than before—a quiet certainty replacing the bravado, as if she’d finally made peace with being ****.

Andy gave her hand a squeeze, and for a moment, the touch was all that needed to be said.

They lingered on the balcony, savoring the new hush. The hotel slumbered beyond them, distant and irrelevant. Andy let himself imagine, for a moment, what it would be like if every wound in the world could be healed with a visitation, an embrace, a bowl of Abuela’s soup.

Dawn shivered in the cooling air, and Andy pulled her close again, this time more gently. “Do you want to go inside?” he asked, his voice barely above the hush.

She shook her head, a streak of defiance in her smile. “Not yet. I just want to stay…” She trailed off, searching for the right word. “Here. For a minute.”

“Here is good,” Andy agreed. They stood together in the hush, neither wanting to be the first to let go.

Eventually, the wind picked up. It rustled the leaves of the potted palms, carried away the last threads of Dawn’s grief, and reminded them both that the night wasn’t infinite, that tomorrow would still arrive whether or not they were ready. Dawn drew a deep breath, then exhaled in a long, deliberate sigh that sounded like a blessing.

“I think she forgives me,” she said, and then, “No. I think she never was disappointed in me to begin with. It was always just me, tripping over myself.”

Andy let that sit for a while. He thought about all the times he had sabotaged his own happiness out of fear or guilt, about how most people’s prisons were ones they’d built brick by careful brick. He squeezed Dawn’s hand again, and she leaned her head on his shoulder—not out of need, but out of genuine comfort. Dawn had built her entire adult life on the belief that she could only be loved if she could be useful. Now she knew this had never been the case.

Dawn smiled, small but true. She wiped her eyes with her wrist again, then reached for Andy’s hand. There was a new confidence in her grip, a quiet, earned certainty. “Thank you,” she said. “For believing me.”

Dawn stayed in Andy’s arms long after the world had gone quiet. The wind on the balcony faded to a hush, and the air, now emptied of its visitation, felt heavy with permission—like a weight had slid off her shoulders and was gone for good. Moonlight caught the soft velour of bunny ears perched atop her head and the little white cottontail swaying at the small of her back, reminders of a playful night that had fallen away into something far more tender.

When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red, but her smile was clean and unclouded. She blinked at Andy, reached up to smooth one floppy ear away from her forehead, as if to check that she really still had them on, then—without a word—took his hand and led him inside.

There was no performance to it, no theater or coyness, just a steady, certain motion. She shut the door behind them, the click low and private. The Suite felt changed, as if the memory of the balcony had rearranged the walls and let the night air in, carrying with it the soft rustle of her cottontail grazing his thigh each time she moved.

Dawn crossed to the bed, sat on the edge, and looked up at him, her face open and unguarded, the bunny ears tilting forward as though they, too, leaned in to listen. Andy joined her, sinking into the mattress, the shell crown on his head forgotten and lopsided. For a long moment, they just breathed together, her shoulder pressed to his, their hands joined in a loose, easy tangle.

When she turned toward him, her touch was gentle but unhesitating. She drew him close, her fingers threading through his hair, her lips finding his with a softness that felt new. The brush of her ears against his cheek, the twitch of her tail against his hip—each sensation was a small marvel. Andy responded, letting the day and the worry and the ache melt away.

This was not the tentative, hopeful intimacy of early days. It was not hungry or ****. It was something quieter—a calm, rooted knowing, the way a tree might cling to the earth after a long, hard wind. Dawn let him hold her, and she held him back, their bodies finding a rhythm that was slow and easy and honest.

She undressed him with care, pausing only to laugh at the stubborn buttons on his shirt, the bunny ears flopping forward in a soft arc, then guided his hands to her own dress, lifting it off with a single, practiced motion. The cottontail brushed his fingers as it bobbed, as though urging him on. She lay back against the sheets, pulling Andy with her, their bodies fitting together with the ease of a memory reclaimed.

Dawn’s skin radiated warmth beneath Andy’s fingertips, the heat of her body a living counterpoint to the haze of moonlight that still filtered into the Suite. He let his hands roam, gentle and exploratory, as if afraid that any sudden motion might shatter the fragile newness between them. Dawn’s breath came quick, but it was not the breath of nerves or performance: it was a breath of arrival, of having finally stepped wholly into the room of her own life. She responded to his touch with a quiet, deliberate boldness, refusing to shy away from his gaze, her dark hair falling in wild arcs about her face and shoulders as she moved.

She touched him everywhere, not just in the ways that were expected—the slow, careful tracing of muscle and bone—but also with an almost scientific curiosity, mapping each ridge and hollow as if each held its own secret. She lingered on the small scar on his left forearm, the one he’d gotten falling from his bike at age eleven. The pad of her finger traced it, then pressed a cool kiss to the spot, as if to rewrite the memory with something softer. She found his collarbone, his knee, the unruly waves of hair at the base of his neck. Every touch was a benediction, a small act of gratitude and reverence, as if she were reciting a prayer with her hands. She pressed herself against him, her breasts moving against his back like a massage, and she straddled his thighs, her hips rocking rhythmically as if she were unconsciously grinding herself against him.

Andy felt himself relax utterly, let go of the old, defensive masks. There were no ghosts here, not now—not even Laura’s. Only Dawn, whole and present, transformed not just by Arabella’s magic but by her own willingness to accept that she deserved all this, that no act of service was necessary payment to deserve happiness. The bunny ears on her head were a comic, impossible touch, but she wore them with such absolute, **** grace.

She shifted, pushing him softly onto his back, and straddled his hips. Her hands found his face, bracketing his cheeks as she bent to kiss him. The kiss was deep and searching, but there was laughter in it, too; she bit at his lip, then soothed it with her tongue, the push-pull intoxicating. In the hush that followed, she ran her palms down his chest, fingers splayed, as if memorizing the shape of him. The ears grazed his forehead, brushing his hair, and then she leaned back to look at him, her smile both dazzling and a little wicked.

He reached up, tugged one ear lightly, and she gave a delighted yelp—half protest, half delight. The cottontail at her lower back quivered with each motion, twitching in miniature sympathy with her every mood. It was absurd, but the absurdity only grounded them, kept the moment from drifting into pure somberness. Andy laughed, and Dawn laughed with him, the sound sweet and unguarded.

The laughter faded, replaced by a wordless urgency. When Andy moved inside her, there was no pause, no trembling hesitation; they fit together easily, as if all the awkwardness and uncertainty had burned off in the kitchen hours ago. Dawn’s hands found his shoulders, bracing herself, her gaze locked to his. She moved with purpose, setting a careful, steady rhythm, her breathing audible and alive. The ears atop her head swung forward with each motion, casting little shadows on her brow, while the cottontail flicked at intervals against his thighs. The sensations were new, almost comical, yet each served only to make her seem more animal and more true—her transformation not a mask, but a revelation.

Dawn exhaled sharply, a sound that bordered on a gasp, and Andy responded instinctively, one hand moving to the small of her back to steady her. The fur of the cottontail tickled his wrist, and she giggled at the sensation, then immediately buried her face in his neck, as if hiding from her own laughter. He stroked her back, up to her shoulders, and she responded by squeezing him tighter with her thighs, drawing him deeper into her orbit.

Their lovemaking was not a contest, nor a performance for an unseen judge. It unfolded slowly, a deliberate, patient rhythm that felt like a dance learned long ago and remembered only now in the doing. Andy’s hands explored the new contours of her, the softness of her new breasts, the silk of her skin, the sturdy muscle beneath. He ran his fingers along the seam where the cottontail met her back, and she shivered, gasping his name into the hollow of his throat.

She moved above him with increasing confidence, her hips finding a true and easy motion, her hands never losing their grip on his shoulders. Andy watched her—the way her hair swung to obscure her eyes, the way her cheeks flushed and her lips parted—and felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of privilege. He knew with deep certainty that no one had ever been allowed to see Dawn like this, because Dawn herself had never seen herself like this. Free.

He remembered the stories she’d told him—her Abuela’s kitchen, the songs, the handed-down stories, the sense of belonging she’d always craved but never quite believed she deserved. In this moment, it seemed to Andy that all those absences, those doubts and fears, had been replaced by something solid. Each time she gasped, or laughed, or called his name, she was laying down a new layer of memory over the old.

As they moved together, Andy became acutely aware of the scents that lingered in the Suite. The ghost of the dinner’s spices, the faint citrus from Dawn’s perfume, the low warmth of caramelized onion clinging to her hair. He inhaled, and the air was thick with the promise of comfort. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and she let him, resting her forehead to his, breathing him in as fiercely as he breathed in her.

They matched each other’s pace, slow and patient, neither in a rush to reach the end. Each shift and roll sent the cottontail flicking against him, a constant, playful reminder that even in the most earnest acts, life insisted on joy. When Dawn began to tremble, Andy held her steady, murmuring her name, his hands gentle on her waist. He didn’t let her come immediately, and she shook with desire as he held her on the cusp of it, slowing down before she could peak. She did not cry out, at least not at first—instead, her whole body seemed to vibrate with the **** of her feeling, the bunny ears quivering, her breath catching in her throat.

And then, suddenly, she did cry out—a ringing, unselfconscious sound that bounced off the high ceilings and ricocheted through Andy's chest like a bell. It was not a sound of pain, nor even of simple pleasure. It was something deeper—a sound of arrival, of being claimed, of being witnessed all the way down. The way her body tightened around him, the trembling that started in her thighs and radiated outward—it undid him completely. Andy felt himself pulled under by her pleasure, dragged willingly into his own release. He pressed his face to her neck and surrendered, their shared climax binding them together in perfect synchronicity.

When it was over, the aftershocks gentle and sweet, Dawn sank onto him, her cheek pressed to his chest, her heartbeat wild against his ribs. He wrapped her in his arms and held her, and for a long, drifting stretch of time, neither spoke. The world outside the Suite had gone completely silent, as if even the waves below had agreed to hold their breath for them.

Dawn’s ears, no longer alert with anticipation, flopped to either side of her head, limp as the wings of a sleeping moth. Her breath evened out, slow and easy, and she drew lazy circles on Andy’s chest with her fingertip. Every so often, the cottontail would twitch as if remembering itself, then settle again.

Andy let himself go slack, pulling the covers over them both and feeling the weight of the night settle in. They lay together, limbs tangled, her head perfectly tucked beneath his chin, the rhythm of her breathing synched to his own. The suite was quiet, save for the soft hum of the air and the distant echo of the sea.

He thought about what had just passed between them—not just the sex, but the transformation it had wrought. The way Dawn had claimed her place in the world, had let her grief become something less sharp, less endless. He wondered if she felt it, too, this sense of newness, of blessing. The idea made him smile, and without thinking, he kissed the crown of her head, just between the ears. She made a pleased, sleepy noise, nuzzling closer. She pressed a gentle kiss to his collarbone and whispered with a shy, exhausted laugh, “What do you suppose Abuela would think of these ears and this tail now?” Her hand drifted to her lopsided ears, stroking them as if they were a child’s toy.

He stroked her hair, the gesture slow and steady, and kissed her forehead where the shell crown had left a faint impression. “She’d smile,” he said. “She’d know this is home for you.”

She smiled, her eyes fluttering closed, the peace in her face as complete as sleep.

In the hush that followed, the Suite settled into itself, the backward chairs and seashells in the next room still catching the last of the lamplight. The world outside waited for morning, but inside, the night held fast—a quiet benediction, a promise that love would be enough.

Andy watched Dawn breathe, each inhale a new beginning. He let his own breath join hers, the two of them in harmony, the memory of the night stitched into the walls around them.

Ground against the Master! +1 VP
Gave the Master a massage! +2 VP
Gave the Master a massage - with her boobs! +3 VP
Edged by the Master! +2 VP

Recurring Author's Note: Check out the sister season, Athanor, here: https://chyoa.com/chapter/Adrien-Moore-%28HH%3A-Athanor%29.1815591

Likes and comments are welcome! And remember to check out the wiki at: https://hhnetwork.miraheze.org/wiki/Harem_Hotel:_The_HH

Aside from info on the contestants, the locations, and so on, a new section - the Marginalia - highlights Easter Eggs, deep cuts, foreshadowings and hidden elements in previous chapters. The same section is also present as a thread on the Discord channel (the Marginalia Discord thread is usually updated more often).
BEWARE! There are no spoiler tags in the wiki, so the Marginalia chapter includes spoilers up to the last published chapter!

Also, don't forget: you're welcome to propose TF ideas for Contestants via the anonymous link here: https://forms.gle/NY5MbGrvv2ZkUknn9 While I can't guarantee they'll all be used, or that they'll be used at the next available TF vote, I look at all suggestions and will try to fit them in where necessary.

Thank you for reading!