A pause. Then his footsteps retreat, and the door clicks shut, and I'm alone with my shaking hands and the ghost of Adrian's smile and the knowledge that I'm surrounded by dangerous men, and I don't know which one to fear more.
The smell pulls me out of the brief I'm pretending to read.
Garlic, sharp enough to reach me all the way in my home office, and underneath it the bitter green edge of broccoli rabe. Then pancetta, rendered fat, the real thing, not the restaurant version that tastes like bacon pretending to be Italian.
No.
I'm out of my chair before I've made the conscious decision to move. The brief scatters across my desk, pages I've read three times without absorbing a single word, my mind too busy circling the drain of this morning's discovery to focus on contract disputes.
He didn't. He couldn't possibly—
The kitchen comes into view, and Cole stands at my stove with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, wooden spoon in hand. Steam rises from a pot of boiling water. Small ear-shaped pasta tumbles through it, catching the light.
Orecchiette.
"Mr. Cole is making something Italian!" Chesca announces from the table, homework abandoned, eyes bright with the particular excitement of a child who's been promised something special. "He said it's your favorite."
Cole doesn't turn around. "It was. A long time ago."
My throat closes.
The night before my LSAT. His apartment with the broken radiator and the stove that only had two working burners. I was so sick with anxiety I couldn't eat. I hadn't eaten in three days, couldn't keep anything down, and was convinced I would fail and disappoint everyone and prove that I was never smart enough to begin with.
He made this. Fed me by hand when my hands shook too hard to hold the fork. Told me I was the most brilliant woman he'd ever met and the test was just a formality, just a hoop to jump through on the way to the life I deserved.
Twelve years ago.I was a girl then, not a mother, not a judge, not a woman who'd learned what men really wanted when they said they loved you.
He remembered.
Xander appears from the living room, takes one look at my face, then at Cole's back, and makes a decision I don't have the energy to argue with.
"Chesca, want to help me check the perimeter? Very important security stuff."
She narrows her eyes with theatrical suspicion. "Is this a grown-up thing?"
"Very much so."
"Fine." She slides off her chair with exaggerated reluctance. "But I want dessert later."
They disappear toward the back door. Xander's hand on Chesca's shoulder, guiding her away from whatever's about to happen.
The door clicks shut.
Cole plates the pasta with careful attention. Broccoli rabe bright against the pale orecchiette, pancetta glistening, a finishing drizzle of good olive oil.
He sets the plate in front of me. Sits across the table like we're just two people having dinner together. Like he didn't violate my trust ten hours ago. Like this isn't a calculated move in a game I'm only beginning to understand.
I stare at the dish. Then at him.
"You remembered." My voice comes out rough, scraped raw by a lack of sleep and something else I won't name.
"I remember everything."
Everything. The coffee with oat milk. The routes I take to work. The threats he's eliminated before they reached me. The pills he swapped in the dark. And this—this specific dish from the night I was most vulnerable, most afraid, most desperate to believe someone saw me as capable.
And this. This specific dish from the night I was most vulnerable, most afraid, most desperate to believe someone saw me as capable.
"Is this supposed to fix something?" I pick up the fork, give my hands something to do besides shake. "You make me orecchiette and I'm supposed to forget?"