Three choices. All mine.
My body still hums with aftershocks. Memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he stopped every time I froze and waited for me to decide.
I hear a door click somewhere in the house and wonder if Cole is also awake, watching security screens instead of staring at ceilings. Probably. He doesn't seem like the type to sleep soundly after something like this.
Something like what, Angelina? What was this?
Sex. It was sex. That's all. You scratched an itch that's been building for eight years and now it's done and tomorrow you can pretend—
Pretend what? That you didn't cry in his arms? That you didn't let him hold you while you fell apart? That you didn't feel safer with him inside you than you've felt in a decade?
Shut up. Go to sleep.
The ceiling doesn't have any answers. Neither does the cold space beside me that I'm deliberately keeping empty.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But my body knows the truth my mind won't admit. I'm already thinking about tomorrow night.
ten
Cole
The dashboard clock reads 6:47. Neither of us has spoken since we left the house.
I know I should be running threat assessments. Calculating variables. The sedan from three nights ago, the gap in courthouse security I identified yesterday, the seventeen different ways someone could access her chambers if they knew the building's maintenance schedule.
Not thinking about the sound she made when she came apart beneath me, the way her body arched off the mattress, and the tears that slid down her temples afterward while I held her together.
Kuso.Focus.
I adjust my grip on the wheel and check mirrors. A silver Camry has maintained position two cars back since Mission Street. It's most likely a commuter based on the driver's posture and the coffee cup visible through the windshield, but I log the plate anyway. Habit. Discipline. The only things keeping me functional right now.
In the passenger seat, Angelina is assembling herself piece by piece.
I watch the transformation from my peripheral vision, noting each element the way I would study a target's security detail.
Pins sliding into her hair, pulling it tight against her skull until not a single strand falls loose. Concealer beneath her eyes, covering the shadows that betray how little she slept. I know she didn't sleep because I checked the exterior feed at 2 AM and her bedroom light was still on, still on at 3, still on at 4:15 when I finally stopped looking.
I didn't go to her. The restraint nearly killed me, but I didn't go.
Her suit is pressed to razor-sharp lines, color-coded tabs are visible in her briefcase, heels polished to a gleam. Judge Castellano taking shape from the raw material of the woman who fell apart in my arms eight hours ago.
But there's one thing she can't polish into place. The way she shifts in her seat, pressing her knees together for one beat too long before catching herself and going still. The slight wince when she adjusts her position, her body reminding her of everything we did in the dark.
Mine. She's mine now, whether she admits it or not.
The possessive thought surfaces before I can stop it. I let it sit there, examine it, decide whether to file it away or act on it. Filing it away seems prudent. Acting on it while she's assembling her professional armor would be counterproductive.
She hasn't met my eyes since we got in the car. Hasn't acknowledged what happened. She moved through the kitchen this morning like nothing between us had changed, pouring coffee, checking Chesca's backpack, kissing her daughter's forehead with the same efficiency she brings to everything.
Everything changed. She knows it. I know it. We're both pretending otherwise because the alternative is a conversation neither of us is ready to have.
I pull into the parking garage and find a spot near the elevator with clear sightlines to both exits. Cut the engine.
She reaches for the door handle.
My hand closes around her wrist before conscious thought catches up, brief, instinctive and the contact point burning through both of us. Her pulse jumps beneath my thumb, quick and hard, betraying everything her composed face refuses to show.