Chapter 2 Charlotte #2
He walks in without being invited. He moves quietly for a man his size, weight on the balls of his feet, and I memorize that automatically because I've been watching the way dangerous men move since I was twenty-two years old.
He's carrying a paper cup. He sets it on the bedside table without ceremony. The smell hits me. Coffee. Real coffee. Not the motor oil from the kitchen. Something dark and rich and freshly brewed.
"Black. One sugar," he says. "There's a spoon."
I stare at the cup. Then at him.
"You remembered."
"I remember everything." He leans against the wall across from me, arms folded, ankles crossed. Taking up space like he pays rent on it. "It's not a gift, principessa. It's a transaction. I brought you coffee. You give me something in return."
"And what's that?"
"The truth."
"I told you the truth."
"You told me part of it. I want the rest."
I pick up the coffee. It's hot. The cup is from somewhere outside the compound, a little cafe logo printed on the side. He went out and got this. At nine in the morning. For me.
Don't read into it. He said it himself. Transaction.
I take a sip. It's good. Really good. The kind of good that makes your eyes close for a second whether you want them to or not. When I open them, he's watching me, and there's a flicker of something in his face that he kills before it fully forms.
"You went out for this," I say.
"I went out for other things. The coffee was on the way."
"Liar."
His mouth twitches. "Careful, principessa. That's my line."
I wrap both hands around the cup and hold it against my chest. Warmth seeps through the paper and into my palms and I hate how much I needed this.
Not the caffeine. The gesture. The proof that someone in this concrete nightmare thought about what I wanted for longer than the three seconds it takes to shove a breakfast tray through a slot.
Don't get soft. Don't you dare get soft.
"I'm not ready to tell you what I saw," I say.
He doesn't react. Doesn't push. He just watches me with those wrong-colored eyes, and the patience in him is more unnerving than anger would be. Angry men are predictable. Patient men are calculating the exact moment you'll break and positioning themselves to catch the pieces.
"Why not?" he asks.
"Because the second I tell you everything, I stop being valuable. And women who stop being valuable to men like you end up in basements or buried."
His jaw flexes. One sharp movement, muscle rolling under skin.
"I haven't put anyone in a basement who didn't earn it."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is."
He pushes off the wall. Takes a step toward me. Then another. He's close now. Close enough that I can smell him. Not cologne. Something earthier. It makes me feel safe, unsettled… all the things a woman would want a man to smell like. Underneath that, just skin. Just a man.
A man who killed people two days ago for me and has been losing sleep over who sent them.
I know this because he looks tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from missed hours.
The kind that comes from a brain that won't shut off, running loops and scenarios, the same way mine runs escape routes and headcounts.
We're the same, him and me. Different machinery, same operating system.
That's a dangerous thought. Kill it.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he says, and his voice is lower now. Quieter. "I know you don't believe that. I know you've got no reason to. But I'm telling you anyway so that when you figure out I'm telling the truth, you'll remember that I said it early."
"That's a long game."
"I'm a patient man."
"You just said you weren't."
The corner of his mouth lifts. Not a beaming smile. A drop in the mask, brief and real, and gone before I can memorize its shape.
"I'm patient about the things that matter," he says. "Everything else, I handle fast."
He turns and walks to the door. Stops with his hand on the frame.
"I'll bring you a lighter sometime," he says. "I can smell the tobacco on you. Unlit cigarettes are a waste of everyone's time."
Then he's gone. The door closes. The lock clicks.
I sit on the bed with his coffee in my hands and my unlit cigarette on the nightstand and the ghost of cedar in the air, and I press my fingers to the back of my neck and count the vertebrae.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Still here. Still standing. Still Charlotte Richardson, whoever the fuck that is anymore.
The coffee is getting cold. I drink it anyway. Every drop. Down to the sugar sludge at the bottom that sticks to my teeth.
I fold the empty cup flat and put it in the trash. Then I fish it back out and put it on the nightstand next to the cigarette.
I don't know why.
Yes you do.
I ignore that voice. I've gotten good at ignoring that voice. Three years of practice. Three years of telling myself that wanting things is dangerous and needing people is fatal and the only person Charlotte Richardson can rely on is herself.
But the coffee was good. And he remembered the sugar. And the spoon.
And he smelled like cedar.
You're fucked, Charlotte.
I know. I know I am.
I count the ceiling tiles again. One hundred and twenty-six. Minus two. One hundred and twenty-four.
The number hasn't changed.
But in that brief interaction… something in me shifted.
Fuck.