Chapter 13 Angelina #3
"I remember everything."
Everything. The coffee with oat milk. The routes I take to work. The threats he's eliminated before they reached me. The pills he swapped in the dark. And this—this specific dish from the night I was most vulnerable, most afraid, most desperate to believe someone saw me as capable.
And this. This specific dish from the night I was most vulnerable, most afraid, most desperate to believe someone saw me as capable.
"Is this supposed to fix something?" I pick up the fork, give my hands something to do besides shake. "You make me orecchiette and I'm supposed to forget?"
"No."
"Then what is this?"
"Dinner." He watches me with those dark eyes that never give anything back. "You haven't eaten since yesterday. Your hands are shaking from low blood sugar, not anger. Whatever you decide to do, you need to eat first."
Bastard. Observant, calculating bastard.
The first bite tastes like twelve years ago. Like the young woman who still trusted easily. Who thought love meant safety instead of surveillance.
The garlic and the fat and the slight bitterness of the greens. it's exactly right. Exactly the way he made it then.
Twelve years. He's been carrying this recipe for twelve years.
"It's perfect," I say, and hate how much I mean it.
"You sound surprised."
"I'm surprised you thought this would work."
His eyes meet mine. "Is it working?"
I should say no. I should throw the plate at his head and scream about everything. The seven years of cameras, what he did in my bathroom, how dare he weaponize my own history against me.
"Yes."
The word comes out quiet.
Cole doesn't smile. Doesn't gloat. Just watches me eat with an expression I can't read. Something between hunger and reverence and the particular patience of a man who's been waiting twelve years for this exact moment.
He stands and comes around the table with that measured grace that used to make me forget my own name in college. Still does, apparently, because I can't move when his fingers slide under my chin and tilt my face up.
My body goes rigid. Man. Close. Too close. The old wiring fires before I can stop it, but he doesn't push. Just waits. Thumb against my throat, feeling my heart slam.
"I told you. Seven years."
He kisses me.
Not asking. Not testing. Taking, like he has every right. Like I haven't spent all day processing the ways he's violated my trust.
I should shove him away. Everything Adrian taught me says to break contact, find distance, protect myself—
I kiss him back.
My fingers twist in his shirt, pulling him closer.
He tastes like garlic and something I can't name, something that feels like coming home to a place I burned down years ago.
Underneath, that scent I've been trying to ignore for days, saffron and cedar, warm and steady, nothing like Adrian's sharp cologne.
The kiss deepens. I let it, because Adrian never remembered anything and Cole remembered orecchiette from twelve years ago and I'm so tired of being the only one holding everything together.
When we break apart, his forehead rests against mine. Both of us breathing hard.
"This doesn't make it okay." The words scrape out of me. "The surveillance. Seven years of watching me." His body goes still against mine. "None of it."
"I know."
"I should throw you out. Call the police. Tell Uncle Sal to make you disappear."
"You should."
"But I'm not going to."
His thumb traces my jawline. "Why not?"
Because Adrian made me feel worthless and you make me feel wanted. Because you violated my trust but you're standing between me and the man who violated my body. Because I'm making choices with my eyes open and that has to count for something.
Because I stopped being normal a long time ago.
"I don't know yet."
It's the most honest thing I've said all day.
I don't have time to say anything more before my daughter barrels into the kitchen demanding to know if she can have gelato for dessert and why do grown-ups always look weird after they have their talks.
Dinner is careful. Cole across the table, Chesca between us chattering about butterflies, my fork pushing orecchiette around the plate because everything tastes like exhaustion and him.
Chesca's bedtime routine takes forever. Three stories instead of two. An extra glass of water. Questions about whether Cole will still be here tomorrow, next week, forever.
"Mamma?" Her voice is sleepy, words blurring at the edges. "He checks the locks like you do. The same doors in the same order."
I force myself to breathe.
"But you only checked my window once tonight." She yawns. "You usually check it three times."
Because Cole already checked. Because somewhere between the surveillance room and the kitchen, I started trusting his perimeter sweeps more than my own.
"You're less scared when he's here too," she murmurs, eyes drifting closed.
I can't answer that. Eight years old and she already knows her mother is afraid.
I smooth her hair back from her forehead, promise her nothing I can't keep, and finally close her door when her breathing evens out.
Xander finishes his final check at ten. Cole retreats to the guest room with a look that promises something—tomorrow, later, eventually—an unfinished sentence in his eyes that makes my stomach flip.
Don't examine that. Don't.
The shower washes away the day but not the taste of him on my lips. Not what I let happen in the kitchen. I kissed him back. Knowing about the cameras. Knowing about what he tried to put inside me. I kissed him anyway.
My reflection looks like a stranger. Flushed. Guilty. Thrilled in a way that should terrify me.
The hallway is dark. I pad back to the bathroom on bare feet, tile cold against my soles.
The pill pack sits where I left it this morning. I slide it into my purse. Zip the pocket closed.
My bed is still cold. Still empty. I slide under the covers and stare at the ceiling, hands finally steady for the first time since 3:07 AM.
Cole thinks he knows everything about me. My coffee order. My routes. My cycle.
He doesn't know I've been playing games with dangerous men my whole life.
You're less scared when he's here.
Chesca's voice echoes in the dark. I turn onto my side. Turn back. The sheets are too cold and the room is too quiet and somewhere down the hall, Cole is awake. I know he's awake. I can feel it like a current running through the walls of my house.
Don't.
I close my eyes.
They don't stay closed.