Chapter 9B
Cain
I wake before my alarm.
The room is dim. The city has a soft glow beyond the windows.
For a moment, I lie still. Listening to nothing.
Just the hum of the building, the distant thrum of traffic, my own breathing.
I turn my head. The pillow smells wrong.
Not wrong. Different. My cologne is there, faint from yesterday morning.
But there’s something else. A scent that doesn’t belong to me.
I sit up.
I didn’t sleep well, but I remember last night. I came back too tired, and abit tipsy. Took a shower and straight to bed, I noticed it, but I didn’t care enough at that time. Now that I think about it, my sheets were more tangled than they should be.
I pull the blanket back. There’s a faint mark on the sheet. Small. The kind of stain you only see if you’re looking for it and I’m looking. Someone was here.
My first instinct is the one I’ve trained into myself over years. Check the logs and eliminate the threat. Instead I swing my legs over the side of the bed and walk through the apartment. The living room is untouched. Everything is exactly where I left them.
The bathroom is the same.
In the closet, one jacket hangs at a slightly different angle. The black one from yesterday. My favorite. It looks normal. But when I touch the sleeve, I can almost feel phantom fingers there.
He was in my office. He was on my desk. He was in my bed.
Of course it’s him.
I lean against the closet door. Close my eyes.
Picture him here. Jacket hanging off his shoulders, too big.
Lying on my bed, face pressed into my pillow, breathing me in like oxygen.
I walk back to the bedroom. Sit on the edge of the bed.
My hand rests on the stain. He wanted me to find this.
To know. To be forced into a choice: stop him, or keep him.
The decent choice, the legal choice, the one HR would insist on, is obvious to terminate him. I don’t pick up my phone. I lie back down. Press my face into the pillow. His scent hits me again. Fainter now that I’ve disturbed the sheets. But still there.
Oh Grey you broke into my home. You touched my things. You left yourself on my bed. You think you’re forcing my hand.
You’re right.
I’m not calling security. I’m not changing the code. I’m not washing the sheets, yet. I’m going to the office. I’m going to look at you across that desk, watch you pretend you’re perfect, and decide exactly how far I’m willing to let you go before I finally close my teeth.