Chapter 14 Angelina
fourteen
Angelina
Istep into the guest hallway before I can talk myself out of it.
The landing glows ahead. A small table with its lamp casting warm light across the hardwood. To my left, my bedroom door. Safety. Sleep. The version of myself who doesn't make choices like this.
I already made the choice. I'm standing here in my sleep shorts and bare feet, and I already made it.
I cross the landing.
The guest hall stretches before me, darker than the family side. The monitoring room door is closed and there's a thin line of light underneath it. But the hallway continues past it, and at the end—
Cole is waiting.
He's leaning against the wall outside his bedroom door, arms crossed. Like he knew exactly where I'd end up tonight. Like he's been standing there counting the minutes since I closed Chesca's door, calculating the probability that I'd come to him.
My eyes catch on the unmistakable ridge straining against his pants. He's hard, standing in his hallway, hard and not even trying to hide it.
Dio.
Heat floods my face before I can stop it. I drag my gaze back up, but the damage is done. He saw me look. The corner of his mouth twitches with something that might be amusement if he were anyone else.
"She's right, you know." His voice is low, rougher than usual around the edges.
"About what?" My voice comes out breathless, and I hate how breathless I sound. Hate that my body is already responding to the sight of him, to the promise implicit in his posture, in that obvious wanting he's making no effort to conceal.
"You only check the windows once now." He pushes off the wall and takes a single step toward me. "Your shoulders don't climb toward your ears when the furnace kicks on. You stopped sleeping with your bedroom door locked two nights ago."
I should be angry. I am angry. About the pills, the surveillance, the way he catalogs every tell my body makes like I'm a case file he's building for some future prosecution.
But my pulse isn't pounding with rage. It's pounding with something else entirely, something I haven't let myself feel in so long I'd almost forgotten what it was.
"That bothers you." Not a question.
"Everything about you bothers me."
He closes the remaining distance between us. The sconce light catches the sharp line of his jaw, the dark intensity in his eyes, the way he's looking at me like I'm the only thing in the world worth looking at.
His hand finds my hip through my thin sleep shorts. Thumb pressing into the curve, possessive and sure.
"Come to my room."
Not a question. Not a demand either. Something in between. An invitation that assumes I've already accepted.
You're less scared when he's here.
Chesca's voice echoes in my head, mixing with the heat pooling low in my belly. My daughter sees what I'm trying not to admit. My body knows what my mind keeps fighting.
My fingers drift to my chest without permission, pressing against the St. Christopher medal through the silk of my tank top. Cool metal against my palm. The habit used to be about protection, asking for guidance in hard moments, requesting safe passage through dangerous territory.
I'm not asking for guidance anymore. I know exactly what I'm choosing.
I step past him without taking his hand. Without looking back. The hardwood is cool under my bare feet as I walk the remaining steps to his door.
My fingers find the doorknob. It turns under my palm, smooth and cold.
I walk through and leave it open behind me.
An invitation. A choice.
His footsteps follow, measured, deliberate, absolutely certain.
The door closes behind him with a quiet click.
The bedside lamp is on. He must have left it that way when he came out to wait for me. Soft golden light spills across the guest room, catching the rumpled sheets from last night, the go-bag in the corner, his tactical watch on the nightstand.
Last time, the light was already off. I'd made sure of it, walked through the door and hit the switch before I could think about it, before he could see me.
I cross to the lamp and reach for the switch.
Click. Darkness.
Better. I can work with darkness. I can hide in shadows, let him feel instead of see, and keep some part of myself protected.
Behind me, footsteps. Then a click.
Light floods back.
I spin around. "Cole—"
"Leave it on." His voice is rough, final.
"I don't—" My arms cross over my stomach automatically, defensive.
The tank top is thin enough that I might as well be naked already.
He can see almost everything in this light.
The soft curve of my belly that won't flatten no matter how many salads I eat, the body that carried a child and survived a marriage and isn't twenty-two anymore.
"Angelina." He says my name like it's a complete sentence. "I want to see you."
"I don't look like I did in college."
"I don't want the woman from college." Another step closer, and now he's near enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body. "I want you. This you. The woman who sentences traffickers without flinching and braids her daughter's hair and checks the locks three times before she can sleep."
Adrian used to turn the lights off. From the very beginning. Our first time together, every time after. He said it was more romantic, more intimate. I believed him for longer than I should have, told myself it was about atmosphere and mood.
It wasn't until years later that I understood. He didn't want to look at me. Couldn't stand the sight of my body even before pregnancy changed it, even before I gave him reasons to criticize. The darkness was never about intimacy. It was about erasure.
Something cracks in my chest. Dangerous and terrifying and maybe inevitable.
I unfold my arms.
Choice made.
My fingers find the hem of my tank top. I pull it over my head in one smooth motion before I can second-guess myself.
His jaw tightens. Hands fisting at his sides like he's physically restraining himself from reaching for me.
I stand there in the lamplight, bare from the waist up, soft belly on display, the stretch marks visible like silver threads telling the story of growing Chesca, keeping her safe when everything else was falling apart.
Cole's eyes travel down my body. Slow. Deliberate. Taking inventory.
Then he exhales like he's been holding his breath for seven years.
He's looking at me. Really looking. And he's not disappointed.
Heat floods low in my belly. He's looking at me, imperfect and real and nothing like what he remembers, and he wants me anyway. I can see it in the way he's holding himself, restraint visible in every locked muscle.
"Your turn." My voice comes out steadier than I expected.
He strips his shirt off in one smooth motion.
The scar through his eyebrow is the same, a kendo accident, junior year. I remember tracing it with my thumb in his dorm room, asking if it hurt, kissing it when he said not anymore.
Everything else is new.
A starburst of raised skin across his left ribs, shrapnel, maybe, or something worse.
A clean surgical line on his shoulder. A faded slash across his inner forearm that looks like a knife wound.
And when he turns slightly, ink I've never seen.
Dark lines across his shoulder blade, flowers cascading over muscle.
Traditional. Japanese. A whole story written on his skin that I wasn't there for.
Twelve years written on his body. I don't have time to read them all tonight.
I hook my thumbs in my sleep shorts. Push them down and step out of them.
His breath catches audibly.
I'm in just cotton underwear now. Nothing sexy about them. Pale pink, practical, the kind you wear when you're not expecting anyone to see. I wasn't planning this when I got dressed this morning. Wasn't planning any of it.
But the way he's looking at me makes me feel like the most desirable woman he's ever seen.
His hand drops to the front of his pants. He palms himself through the fabric, adjusting, and the sight of that, the visible evidence of what I'm doing to him, sends a bolt of heat straight through my core.
He's losing control. Watching me strip and losing control.
I push my underwear down. Step out of them. Stand there naked in the lamplight with nowhere left to hide.
His eyes drop between my thighs and stay there for a long, charged moment before dragging back up to my face. His expression isn't disappointed or critical or any of the things Adrian's face used to show in the rare moments he looked at me at all.
He looks hungry.
"Kuso." The word comes out strangled. "Fuck, you're—"
"Don't." I step into him, palms flat on his chest, feeling his heart slamming against my skin. "Don't tell me I'm beautiful. Don't make this romantic."
Make this mine. Let me take instead of being taken.
"Then what do you want?"
"I want to do something." I curl my fingers into his chest hair, feel the rumble of his groan beneath my palms. "And you're not going to touch me unless I tell you to."
His breathing goes ragged. He nods once, jaw tight and tendons standing out in his neck from the effort of staying still.
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"No." Then, quieter, "Understood."
I shove him backward onto the bed.
He hits the mattress with a grunt, back against the headboard, and I'm climbing over him before I can second-guess myself. Knees bracketing his hips, thighs pressing against his sides, my body positioning itself exactly where I want it.
I'm in control. I need to be in control.
I kiss him first, hard, taking, demanding. My fingers find the button of his pants and work it open, then the zipper. He lifts his hips without being asked, desperate, eager, and I tug the fabric down just far enough to free him.
He's thick and flushed, straining toward me.
My hand wraps around him and he's hot and hard and mine.
"Angelina—" His voice breaks on my name.
"Hands on the headboard."