When did I start trusting him? When did my body decide he was safe without asking permission from my brain?
You don't trust him. You can't afford to trust him. He left, Angelina. He made that choice for both of you, and you spent three years picking up the pieces, and then Adrian—
I shut that thought down hard. Towel off. Pajamas. Teeth brushed. The motions automatic, the same sequence every night, routine and control.
I lie down on cold sheets and close my eyes.
The jacket I wore all the way to my office, the smell of saffron and cedar.Then don't lecture me about overprotective.The way he saidI noticedabout Chesca leaning into him, like admitting it was a door he couldn't close again.
Sleep.
The ceiling stares back.
I turn onto my side and then turn back. The house ticks and settles around me.
My body won't quiet, and not with the anxious energy I'm used to but the other kind, the kind that lives lower and hasn't stirred in years. My skin feels too warm under the sheets, and every time I close my eyes I see his face. And that beat where his control slipped, the way he pulled it back like slamming a door.
I lie there for a long time.
Then I get up.
My feet are cold feet on hardwood. No slippers, no robe. I walk to the landing, the wide square of floor where the left hall meets the right.
Left is my territory. Chesca's door pulled to, the warm night light. Safety.
Right is his.
I turn left and take one step toward my daughter's door. Then I stop.
And turn right.
The carpet runner muffles my footsteps as I walk down the guest hall. Past his bedroom to the monitoring room is at the end of the hall. Light leaks from underneath.
He's awake. Of course he's awake.
Why am I here?
I don't have an answer that would hold up under cross-examination. My hand finds the door handle anyway.
The room is lit by four screens cycling through camera feeds. My empty kitchen, my dark living room, the street outside where nothing moves, the hallway I just walked down. Cole sits in front of them and looks up when the door opens. His expression is something I would pay a considerable amount of money not to see, because it isn't surprise.
He watched me walk here. Leaving my room, crossing the landing, turning right, pausing and turning left. He sat here and let me come to him.
"You should sleep," I say. Which is not why I came, which we both know is not why I came.
"In a bit."
I don't leave and he doesn't ask me to.
The screens cycle. Kitchen, living room, street, hallway. I'm standing in a doorway in a tank top and sleep shorts at eleven at night, and he's looking at me, and I need to walk away.
I step in and close the door behind me.
His hands stay flat on the desk, deliberately still.
"I can't—" I start and then stop.Can't do this. I can't stand in a room full of surveillance feeds of my own house wanting a man I only allowed in because Sal gave me no choice.
"It's been a long day." His voice is careful. Controlled. Giving me an exit. "The evacuation —"