“You can’t promise that.”
I looked at him sharply. “What?”
“You can promise to try,” Hoka said. “You can promise vigilance, loyalty, force if necessary. But safety?” He shook his head once. “No. Not unless you intend to lock her away, and before you get any ideas, that doesn’t work either.”
I snorted. “Oh yes? Because you tried?”
“I did.”
I hadn’t expected that answer, and I wanted to ask more, a great deal more, but then the front door of Emily’s house opened.
I saw Adam saunter out.
At first his pace looked easy, almost careless, but by the time he reached the end of the path something in him had changed. The smile was gone. So was the polished calm. Even at this distance I could see the irritation riding him, the anger under his skin, and the sight of it hit me with such immediate violence that for one dark second I wanted to walk across the street and kill him where he stood.
Beside me, Hoka chuckled softly.
“Mm,” he said. “Someone’s ego has been bruised.”
I looked at him then and saw it—the same quiet pride he used to wear when I was younger and still got back to my feet after every hit he gave me. He had been testing Emily in his own way. Letting her stand where I wanted to shield her, making me watch her instead of rushing in.
I hated that.
And yet, as I looked back at Adam’s face, twisted now with the kind of thwarted fury only men like him ever mistook for wounded dignity, I also felt something dangerously close to gratitude.
Whatever Emily had said or done in that house, she had done it standing upright.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I sent her a message.
I’m here if you need me.
I understood that she did not need me to save her in that moment. She needed the possibility of me. The certainty that if she reached, I would answer.
Hoka started the car without another word. Even Olivero stayed silent, which was achievement enough to deserve formal recognition.
By the time we reached the hotel and Hoka handed the keys to the valet, my anger had settled into something harder and more useful.
He turned to me. “Come have dinner with me and your aunt. Try not to overthink everything. And I beg every ancestor before us, if you decide to do something stupid, tell me first.”
I glanced at him. “Why? So you can stop me?”
“No. So I can improve the quality of your bad decisions.” Then he jerked his head toward the entrance. “Come on, oikko,” he said, using the Japanese word for nephew. “Let’s eat.”
I did my best to look marginally more relaxed during dinner, which I suspected fooled absolutely no one. Violet was warm, perceptive, and visibly tired in the way only pregnancy seemed able to make women look, while Hoka was his usual unreadable self, but neither of them commented on the fact that my phone stayed on the table beside my hand the entire evening.
It lit up twice, both times with things that didn’t matter, and each time I looked down too quickly.
I told myself I was being patient. Reasonable. Respectful of the space Emily had asked for. And perhaps some small part of me even believed it for an hour or two.
But by the time I got back to my room, patience had begun to feel suspiciously similar to torture.
When the sun started to rise and Olivero disappeared for his morning jog, I left before he could ask too many questions. I was not enough of a fool not to know that my phone could be tracked if anyone bothered to look for me, but I had no desire to sit through the entirely earned mockery that would come with explaining myself first.
Forty minutes later I was parked in a rented car in the hospital lot, the engine off, the Seattle rain ticking softly against the windshield.
I had told Emily I would be at the hotel if she needed me. That was true when I said it.