27. Kate #3
Not all of it. The locked study held far more than old songs and abandoned instruments, but every word I’d given him was real. For tonight, it was enough to quiet the guilt.
“Piano first,” he murmured above me.
“What?”
“When you play for me. Start with the piano.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where you found your voice.”
I closed my eyes.
“Sometime,” I repeated.
Michael kissed my hair. “I’m a patient man.”
I tipped my face up. “You are absolutely not.”
You said the music was gone.”
“It is.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” I look past him toward the windows, searching for an explanation I’ve never been able to find.
“The music healed me. Or maybe I healed and stopped needing it. I went to college. I started living again. Somewhere along the way, the grief loosened its hold on me, and the songs stopped coming.”
“And now?”
“Now I want them back.” I lift one shoulder, but the small movement can’t disguise how much it hurts.
“I sit down at the piano and wait for something to happen. Sometimes I play the old songs, hoping they’ll lead me somewhere new, but they never do.
Whatever opened inside me after my parents died closed when I learned how to live without them. ”
Michael’s expression softens. “Maybe that’s because you’re trying to write from a place you don’t live anymore.”
“That’s easy to say when it isn’t your life.”
“You’re right.”
The immediate concession surprises me.
He moves closer and settles his hands around my waist.
“Or maybe you need a new source of inspiration.”
“And what would you suggest?”
His mouth curves as he pulls me against him.
“Me.”
I laugh, but the sound disappears beneath his kiss. His mouth moves over mine slowly, stealing the argument before I can make it. When he finally lets me breathe, his forehead rests against mine.
“That’s extremely arrogant,” I whisper.
“You’re already thinking about it.”
Unfortunately, he’s right.
For weeks, I got away with it. We burned hot between the sheets, the kind of intimacy that melts bone and blurs logic. His hands knew my body like a roadmap, and his voice in the dark was the thing I craved more than sleep.
But it wasn’t just sex. He took me to dinner—real, elegant dinners where I wore heels and he wore cufflinks. He kissed my fingers in restaurants and didn’t care who saw.
Saturday mornings became our thing. Coffee in hand, we’d hike the trail again. Amber always led the way, tail wagging, disappearing ahead of us like she knew the mountaintop was ours alone.
Up there, it felt like time stood still.
He’d pull me into his arms as the wind whipped around us, and I’d rest my head on his chest and pretend the world down below didn’t exist. Just us, high above the town that once belonged to me alone—but now belonged to us both, in ways I couldn’t explain.
It was a dream. A whirlwind romance of danger and soft kisses. Of secrets and sweet things whispered in the dark. And I knew it couldn’t last.
But oh, God—I wanted it to.
The days began to blur.
We slipped into a rhythm, a secret life between two empires.
Nights at my place or his penthouse suite above the casino.
Days spent building our worlds—his in suits and cash, mine in charm and strategy.
Greta and I played a weekly game of cat-and-mouse with his security team.
I pretended an empty loft on Main was my office, slipping past them with enough fake phone calls and decoy bags to fool them, before ducking into my real office across town.
And somehow, between high-stakes deals and hidden truths, Michael and I were falling. Hard.
He’d take me out to dinners that turned into whispered conversations on moonlit balconies. We hiked again—back to that ledge where you could see forever—and kissed under stars we couldn’t name. When he looked at me, it was like he saw the only thing in the world that mattered.
It was a dream.
A whirlwind romance of danger and hot kisses, of stolen moments and sweet nights that stretched into morning.
Until one day, I went for my usual jog.
Amber padded beside me, tongue lolling out, and my bodyguard trailed behind like clockwork. I hit my favorite loop, the one that cut between buildings where the city hadn't quite kept up with itself.
That’s when it happened.
A hand. A grip. A pull.
Whisked into the shadows of a side alley where the security camera didn’t quite meet the corner.
My heart jumped into my throat.
Then I saw him.
The FBI agent. From last summer.
"We don’t have much time," he said in a rush, eyes darting past me. "I need you. Your government needs you."
"What—?"
"He’s dangerous. Viktor is missing. Do you know him?"
I shook my head dumbly, fear coiling like a serpent in my stomach.
He pressed a business card into my palm. "Call me."
Before I could ask another word, he was gone.
Amber barked and my guards came jogging around the corner.
"You good?"
"Yeah," I lied, stretching my calf. "Just a cramp."
The card burned against my skin, hidden now inside my sports bra.
And nothing about this jog felt normal anymore.