Chapter 16 #2
Not tonight. Not with St. Paul's in my head and the cop's voice in my ears. The playboy would have leaned in. Let the evening find its trajectory. But I was trying—genuinely, clumsily—to be better than that. To deserve the way she looked at me.
The perfect date. That was the objective.
It started wrong.
Not obviously. But I could feel it. The split attention. The operational mind refusing to stand down. The part of me that should have been here, with her, running scans on every car, every pedestrian, every window that could conceal a vantage point.
"Are you all right?" she asked. Halfway to the restaurant.
"Fine. Work things. Nothing to worry about."
She gave me the reading look. I gave her the closing smile. She let it go, but I felt her noting it. Chelsea didn't push. She collected.
The restaurant was private—chef's table in the back room of a place that didn't advertise. I'd called ahead. Arranged the menu. Done the things I knew how to do.
We'd barely had our wine when they appeared.
Three women. Tall, lean, the geometry of bodies that were professional instruments. Moving through the room with the confidence of people who'd made peace with being watched years ago.
I recognized all three.
Swedish. Brazilian. Eastern European. I'd slept with them all. Different cities, different years, the interchangeable intimacy of a life where beautiful women appeared like room service—always available, always gone by morning.
"Remington!" The Swede arrived first. Both cheeks. Perfume before she did. "How long has it been?"
"Too long," I said, because that was what you said.
The Brazilian next. Hand on my shoulder a beat too long. Then the third, whose kiss was less greeting and more reminder.
They glanced at Chelsea. Quick. Assessing. The territorial mapping women did when the landscape was unclear. Who is she? Where does she rank?
Chelsea smiled. Said hello. Sat with her wine and her composure and didn't flinch. But I saw it underneath. The rigidity in her shoulders. The tightened fingers on the stem.
They lingered too long. Inside jokes. Shared history deployed like a flag in disputed territory.
I wanted them gone. Didn't make them leave. The playboy knew the gracious exit. The man replacing him didn't have the tools yet.
They left eventually. Air kisses. Promises. The fading click of expensive shoes.
The food arrived. Something delicate, considered. A meal that deserved attention and the full presence of two people who'd been looking forward to the evening.
I ate like a robot.
Fork. Mouth. Chew. Senses reaching outward—toward the room, the exits, the windows, the street.
The cop's voice looping. Especially for a man like you.
Every sound assessed. By the time I'd cleared the plate, the food was cold, my glass was empty, and I'd drunk too fast and eaten too slow, and the evening was slipping through my fingers.
"Is everything okay?" Quieter now. The lightness gone from the question.
"Fine."
The word was becoming a wall. I hated it.
A pause. Then, with casual precision: "Those girls were lovely."
Something almost snapped.
They mean nothing. Right there. The truth that would've cleared the air. Shown her the man across from her was not the man those women knew.
"Yeah," I said. "Nice enough."
The barb landed. I saw it—not in her face, which stayed composed, but in her eyes, which dimmed by a fraction I caught because I was trained to catch everything, including the damage I was doing to someone who deserved none of it.
She knew. Maybe not with certainty. But the intimacy those women had shown wasn't subtle. The touches. The familiarity. The way they'd looked at me like something they’d borrowed for a time.
I was surprised their cattiness hadn't gone further. A hand on my thigh. A whispered aside. The kind of territorial display women in that world deployed without thinking.
Dessert came. Finished without tasting it.
The conversation had run its course. Not hostile.
Not cold. Depleted. The fuel that had powered days of honesty and the careful work of two people finding each other—consumed by the cop and the models and my own inability to be present when presence was the only thing she'd asked for.
I wasn't being mean. But I was being curt. Short answers. Flat responses. The conversational equivalent of a door held open just enough to not technically be closed.
She deserved better. The knowing made it worse.
We walked to the car.
Cold night. Clear sky.
I tried to apologize. Failed.
"I'm sorry about tonight." Too stiff. The words of a man who knew the music but had lost the melody. "I was distracted. You didn't do anything wrong."
"It's fine," she said.
It wasn't. The word sat between us like a wall—my wall—and hearing her use it against me was a punishment I'd earned completely.
Underneath: disappointment. Not anger. Disappointment was worse. Anger meant you'd provoked something. Disappointment meant you'd failed to.
That was how I felt.
A disappointment.
Fuck.
I drove her to the eighth. The wrong kind of silence in the car. Not comfortable quiet. The tense kind. Too much unsaid with no safe way to say it.
I parked outside her building. She turned to me.
Kissed me on the cheek. Soft. Brief. The distance between a cheek and a mouth had never felt so vast.
"Get some sleep," she said. Got out.
She might as well have said get your shit together before the next time I see you. That clean. That deserved.
I watched her walk in without looking back. The coat. The low heels. The straight spine of a woman who'd given a man the evening and gotten less than she'd earned.
Lobby light on. Then off.
I sat in the car.
Anger building. Not at her. At myself. At St. Paul's.
At the cop. At three women who'd materialised like ghosts from a life I was trying to leave and had reminded Chelsea, in ten minutes of perfume and air kisses, that the man she was choosing to trust had a history that looked nothing like the person he was trying to become.
I wanted them to come. Right now. The fuckers from St. Paul's.
Their Consortium friends. Whoever was watching from whatever rooftop the cop had indicated.
I wanted them to step out and give my anger a destination, because the alternative was sitting here with it, and the sitting was worse than anything they could do.
They didn't come.
The street was empty. The eighth was quiet.
I drove back to the hotel.
Not The Sanctuary. I knew I should. Debrief with Kane. Review the footage Ellsworth was pulling. Do the responsible thing.
But right now, in a car that still carried her perfume and the wreckage of an evening I'd ruined, I gave zero fucks about what I should and shouldn't be doing.
Zero.