Good evening, Cole.I’ve never used his first name.
How was your day?I’ve never asked.
I hope your business meetings went well.I’ve never cared.
I’ll mix a drink for Wolf—forCole. I’ll listen when he answers my questions, and I’ll come up with more to keep the conversation going. I’ll keep a civil tongue in my head, all night long.
I’ll do it tonight. And tomorrow, if I have to. And for all of next week, as long as it takes. I’ll prove I can follow his goddamn rules. I’ll show he can trust me. He can add me to the feckin’ security system, once and for all.
Swallowing hard, I make my way down the long corridor to the stairs, catching a whiff of nail polish remover as I walk past the guest room. I pause at the top of the steps, looking down at my chest, trying to determine whether a faint tracery of my writing remains. I’m still undecided when I hear my name from the marble foyer below me.
“Kate.”
It’s Wolf’s voice, but it sounds as if he’s been gnawing his way through a barrel of crackers without a drop to drink. He barely manages a whisper.
He’s standing by the front door, his fingers on the knob as if he was about to leave. He’s dressed in his usual black, but his jeans and his turtleneck look comfortable, relaxed. There’s anease to his shoulders, as if he recently set down some heavy weight.
“Good evening,” I remember to say. But I don’t add his name, because that’s too different. That’s too strange.
I feel embarrassed up here, stranded at the top of the stairs. My cheeks flush like I’ve been caught doing something filthy, which is ironic, because I’m wearing more clothes right now than I have most nights we’ve spent in this brick-lined cage.
I’ve tried too hard, worked to turn myself into something I’m not meant to be. It takes every last gram of my willpower not to turn on my heel and run down the hall, not to escape into our bedroom and lock the door behind me.
How was your day?That’s the next line of my script, but it’s too soon to ask the question. I need to walk downstairs first. Wolf and I must head into the kitchen together. We need to scrounge up dinner because it’s Sunday, Anna and Nilsson’s day off.
“I was just leaving,” Wolf says.
My fingers grip the banister like an earthquake is tearing apart the house around us. I don’t even try to parse the disappointment that knifes through me. I don’t consciously string together my words: “I thought we’d have dinner…”
“It’s the last Sunday of the month,” he says, as if I don’t have a calendar on my mobile.
“I...” I don’t know how I intend to finish that sentence. “Of course...” That one either. “You…” Idefinitelydon’t know where that’s supposed to go.
“Come with me,” he says, and then he looks surprised, as if he didn’t intend to extend the invitation.
“Where?”
“Please,” he says, and that’s not an answer, but it’s more of a request than he’s ever given me before.
I walk down the stairs. When Wolf opens the door for me, I step onto the front porch. I take his arm when he offers it, walking by his side across the curved drive.
He opens the third bay of the garage, revealing a car I haven’t seen before. It’s a dark silver sedan, like half the cars on the road. I never thought I’d see a billionaire hacker king driving a hybrid Toyota Camry.
“Where are we going?” I ask, as he navigates the vehicle through the hated gate.
His lips narrow, and it occurs to me that he’s testing his answer inside his head. He’s writing our conversation, the same as I did upstairs.
But I don’t know my lines. So I have no idea how to reply when he says, “It’s time you met my family.”
41
COLE
Istand as Mrs. A comes into the living room. Her eyes are suspiciously bright. Her nose is red, and she has a Kleenex stuffed up the sleeve of her cardigan sweater. But she smiles as she crosses the room, and she takes a seat on the couch beside Mr. A.
“I’m sorry about that,” she says. “My allergies get the better of me this time of year.”
Her allergies. And my springing Kate on her, without a word of warning.