Angelina
Istep into the guest hallway before I can talk myself out of it.
The landing glows ahead. A small table with its lamp casting warm light across the hardwood. To my left, my bedroom door. Safety. Sleep. The version of myself who doesn't make choices like this.
I already made the choice. I'm standing here in my sleep shorts and bare feet, and I already made it.
I cross the landing.
The guest hall stretches before me, darker than the family side. The monitoring room door is closed and there's a thin line of light underneath it. But the hallway continues past it, and at the end—
Cole is waiting.
He's leaning against the wall outside his bedroom door, arms crossed. Like he knew exactly where I'd end up tonight. Like he's been standing there counting the minutes since I closed Chesca's door, calculating the probability that I'd come to him.
My eyes catch on the unmistakable ridge straining against his pants. He's hard, standing in his hallway, hard and not even trying to hide it.
Dio.
Heat floods my face before I can stop it. I drag my gaze back up, but the damage is done. He saw me look. The corner of his mouth twitches with something that might be amusement if he were anyone else.
"She's right, you know." His voice is low, rougher than usual around the edges.
"About what?" My voice comes out breathless, and I hate how breathless I sound. Hate that my body is already responding to the sight of him, to the promise implicit in his posture, in that obvious wanting he's making no effort to conceal.
"You only check the windows once now." He pushes off the wall and takes a single step toward me. "Your shoulders don't climb toward your ears when the furnace kicks on. You stopped sleeping with your bedroom door locked two nights ago."
I should be angry. I am angry. About the pills, the surveillance, the way he catalogs every tell my body makes like I'm a case file he's building for some future prosecution. But my pulse isn't pounding with rage. It's pounding with something else entirely, something I haven't let myself feel in so long I'd almost forgotten what it was.
"That bothers you." Not a question.
"Everything about you bothers me."
He closes the remaining distance between us. The sconce light catches the sharp line of his jaw, the dark intensity in his eyes, the way he's looking at me like I'm the only thing in the world worth looking at.
His hand finds my hip through my thin sleep shorts. Thumb pressing into the curve, possessive and sure.
"Come to my room."
Not a question. Not a demand either. Something in between. An invitation that assumes I've already accepted.
You're less scared when he's here.
Chesca's voice echoes in my head, mixing with the heat pooling low in my belly. My daughter sees what I'm trying not to admit. My body knows what my mind keeps fighting.
My fingers drift to my chest without permission, pressing against the St. Christopher medal through the silk of my tank top. Cool metal against my palm. The habit used to be about protection, asking for guidance in hard moments, requesting safe passage through dangerous territory.
I'm not asking for guidance anymore. I know exactly what I'm choosing.
I step past him without taking his hand. Without looking back. The hardwood is cool under my bare feet as I walk the remaining steps to his door.
My fingers find the doorknob. It turns under my palm, smooth and cold.
I walk through and leave it open behind me.
An invitation. A choice.
His footsteps follow, measured, deliberate, absolutely certain.