"And if I never knock?"
His jaw tightens. A muscle moves beneath the skin. He holds my gaze and the effort it costs him to say the next word is visible, physical, a man lifting something heavier than he expected.
"Then I wait."
The wordwaitfills the hallway. I feel it settle between us — patient, immovable, a vow that doesn't need a church or a priest.He will wait. He means it. This man who has waited for nothing in his life will wait for me.
"Goodnight, Siobhan."
"Goodnight, Nico."
He turns. Walks to his door. Disappears behind it. The click of his latch is the loudest sound in the penthouse.
I close my own door. Lean against it.
I pull out my phone. Among the congratulatory texts and the missed calls from Declan, there's a notification from my bank: a deposit confirmation, the account Nico set up per our terms. The amount is larger than we discussed with a note attached:Funded as agreed. The difference is a wedding gift. Do what you want with it. —N
He honored the terms. Every one. The separate bedroom. The freedom. The money. The lack of obligation. And then he went further with the books, the flowers, the champagne switch at the reception that he thought I didn't notice.
The pattern is clear: he keeps his promises and then exceeds them. He gives me exactly what I asked for and then gives me something I didn't know I wanted. It's either the most calculated courtship in the history of arranged marriages or it's something more dangerous… Maybe it’s genuine.
I lie in bed. The sheets are soft. The peonies smell sweet. The city moves outside the east-facing windows and the light is gentle, exactly right, and the man who arranged all of it is thirty feet away behind a door I could walk through right now.
I don't sleep.
At midnight, I give up pretending. I get up. I'm wearing a T-shirt and shorts — I didn't bring anything romantic, didn't want to pretend this was something it wasn't — and I pad barefoot into the hallway. The hardwood is cold. The penthouse is dark except for the city glow through the glass walls.
I go to the kitchen for water. That's all. Water.
But his door is between here and there, and when I pass it my feet slow without my permission. I stop. Stand in the hallway in the dark. The door is closed. The gap at the bottom shows no light.
I listen.
A creak. The bed shifting. Then footsteps — slow, heavy, crossing the room. They stop. On the other side of the door. Close. Close enough that I can feel the change in the air, the weight of a body displacing the silence.
He heard me. He's standing right there, two inches of wood between us, and neither of us reaches for the handle.
Five seconds. Ten. An entire conversation happening in silence, in the dark, through a closed door.Are you there? Yes. Are you thinking about it? Yes. Are you going to open this door? Not tonight. Not yet.
His footsteps retreat. The bed creaks again.
I get my water. I go back to my room.
I don't knock. Not because I'm afraid. Not because I don't want to. Because when I walk through that door, I want it to mean something. I want it to be a choice I've made with my whole self — not impulse, not adrenaline, not wedding-night obligation. I want to knock on that door because I've decided, with every part of me, that what's on the other side is what I want.
I'm not there yet. But I'm closer than I was this morning.
I press my hand flat against the wall that separates our rooms. The plaster is cool. Solid. On the other side: his bed, his body, the sound of his breathing that I couldn't actually hear but imagined so vividly it might as well have been real.
Thirty feet. One decision.
I close my eyes. I don't sleep. And somewhere on the other side of this wall, I know — the way you know things you can'tprove, the way your body knows things your mind hasn't caught up to — he's awake too.
Waiting.
Just like he promised.
Chapter 9