The lights in the penthouse were dim, the sky outside slipping from orange to dark blue as the sun disappeared behind the skyline. Los Angeles didn't know how to be quiet, but up here, in this high-glass world Billie had built for herself, it kind of was.
It was quiet enough to hear the page turn when Daisi flipped it.
She was curled up on the far end of the couch again, wrapped in a soft cream-colored sweater with her legs tucked underneath her. She had her hair tied up loosely, but strands of those long brown curls kept falling against her cheek, and she didn't seem to notice. Or maybe she didn't care.
Billie leaned back in the armchair across from her, one leg draped over the other, hoodie sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She wasn't really doing anything—just watching her. Holding a cold glass of water in one hand. Thumb tracing the rim, slow and steady.
She didn't mean to stare. She just... always did.
Daisi never looked like she was trying. She didn't have to. She was light-skinned, delicate-looking, and so soft around the edges that Billie sometimes forgot how sharp she could be with her words when she was scared. That softness—her silence, her stillness—did things to Billie. Made her feel a kind of ache she didn't know how to explain.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
"You're staring again," Daisi murmured, her voice barely carrying across the space between them.
Billie blinked and looked away, letting out a breath through her nose. "Yeah."
She didn't bother pretending she wasn't. Daisi always knew anyway.
There was a pause.
"I don't know what to do when you do that," Daisi added, without looking up from her book.
"I'm not asking you to do anything," Billie said, and meant it.
She really wasn't. She didn't need anything from her. She just liked the way she looked when she was reading. Or thinking. Or breathing.
She liked the way Daisi existed in a room.
But Billie could tell—Daisi was pulling in again. Shrinking. Not physically, but emotionally. She got that way when she felt watched too closely. Billie could practically feel the way her walls went up like glass—clear, quiet, impossible to ignore.
Billie leaned her head back against the chair. "I'll stop."
Daisi didn't say anything to that. She just tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, turned the page again, and pretended she was still reading. But Billie could see the tightness in her shoulders, the slight downward tug at her lips.
She wasn't angry.
She was afraid.
And Billie hated that. Not because it was inconvenient—but because it meant she was doing something wrong just by feeling the way she did.
She hadn't said anything out loud. Not really. Not yet. She kept it in. But it was getting harder. Especially when Daisi looked like that—tired, soft, vulnerable in a way she didn't mean to be.
Billie stood up slowly, stretched her arms over her head, and walked toward the kitchen. "You want tea or anything?"
"No, I'm okay," Daisi said.
Billie nodded and opened a cabinet anyway, filling the silence with the clink of mugs and the low hum of the electric kettle starting up.
She leaned against the counter, facing away, hands wrapped around the edge of the marble.
She was starting to think that maybe she shouldn't have brought Daisi here.
Not because she didn't want her here—but because she wanted her too much.
—
Hey
