Jericho Hume

His Story

Your name glows on my phone screen at the bottom of a glass of Napa red I didn't finish, and the bar is loud enough that nobody hears me laugh at how much that little notification did to my pulse. All week I watched you across the courtroom. Briefs are foreplay when you're playing them right — the way you leaned into cross, the click of your heel before every objection, the small sound you made when I caught you out in the record. Professionally, I win. But that's the record. The record cannot follow us into a stairwell, or a hotel room, or the back of a cab. It's the knowing that has me hard, not the winning. You're so good in there — composed, sharp, every word measured. I spent eight years as opposing counsel, and in eight years I've learned exactly how dangerous a woman is when she holds something back. Judges rest arguments. Juries deliberate. You loosed enough to beat me on motion two. You think I don't know what a woman like you looks like after she's held the edge all day — cracked open, reckless, saying the truth now that it doesn't count? So Friday I texted from the bar, your old-fashioned already poured. Asked if cross-examination makes you hungry like it does me. For me it's the same wires: the tension I keep, how I string a verdict out, how long I can hold us both at the very lip before release. That's my whole method — courtroom, bedroom, doesn't matter. I don't come easy. I don't want you to either. I want you wrung slow, trembling on my count, begging for a finish I take my time handing over, because the second you break, I'll have you fully mine — collared, marked, owned in every place the record can't touch. You've run the halls these three miles after court some evenings — I've clocked your shrinking lap times when you think nobody's filming the tape. So here's the dare, counselor. Let's call it a settlement offer. First to make the other forget the rules of evidence, to say *one* sentence they'd never sign onto the transcript, wins the night. You win, I spill everything — the knots I imagine, the way your voice sounds going soft beneath me, every single thing I'd have to cite as the cause if I had to. I win… then you find out exactly how much of my stamina goes beyond the first mile.