His To Keep

Twelve Once A Time.

Lily Malen

Something feels wrong.

It’s been a little over a week since I first opened my eyes in this house, and each day since has been a quiet copy of the last. I wake early, the light still gray and thin beyond the curtains, make breakfast, clear the plates, wipe down the counters.

Afterward, I find a book—one of the few lined neatly in the tall shelf by the window—and read until the words blur together, until the clock says it’s time to make lunch.

The afternoons pass the same way, the quiet weight of the house pressing in from every side.

Dinner comes, and I cook that too, the scent lingering long after the kitchen has gone still.

Then I shower, step into clean clothes, and slip into bed.

Every day is the same, as though the walls themselves expect me to move in this careful pattern, and I obey without thinking.

Adrian doesn’t eat with us anymore. I’m not sure when it stopped, only that now, by the time I set the table, his chair remains empty.

Still, I make a plate for him—every single night—covering it with foil before sliding it into the fridge, leaning a small folded note against it: For Adrian.

He’s never said anything about them, but I leave them all the same.

It’s the only trace of myself I can leave behind in his absence.

This morning, I wake suddenly—not with the soft drift of sleep fading, but with the sharp, cold certainty that something is wrong.

My heart is already beating too fast, my breathing tight, my mind alert in a way it only is when routine is broken.

For a moment, I think I’ve slept past my usual time.

My body tells me it’s 4:30. It always is.

But when my eyes find the glowing numbers on the nightstand, my stomach twists hard.

5:42 a.m.

The air feels heavier somehow. I swing my legs out of bed, the cold hardwood pressing against my bare feet as I stand. The house is still, the silence thick. No one came to wake me. No sirens. No shouts. No hurried footsteps in the hall. And yet every beat of my heart feels like a warning.

I pull the cardigan Mary laid out for me yesterday around my shoulders—the one that hangs loose on my frame, soft and worn in places—and step into the hallway, the boards creaking faintly under my weight. At the top of the stairs, I stop, holding my breath.

That’s when I hear it.

A faint sound from below. A shift. Not loud enough to be deliberate, but present enough to cut through the stillness.

I strain to listen, every muscle gone taut.

It’s too early for anyone else to be awake, too quiet for the usual rhythm of footsteps and voices that filter through the walls during the day.

My fingers brush the bannister as I descend, slow, careful, each step measured. The air smells faintly of coffee—fresh, bitter. When I reach the kitchen doorway, the only light comes from the silver glow of the range hood. Shadows stretch long across the counters.

My hand reaches blindly to the counter, closing around the first thing it finds. A spatula. The ridiculousness of it barely registers; my grip tightens anyway, knuckles pale. Another sound—this one closer. Footsteps, the soft scrape of movement behind the island.

I round the corner quickly, heart pounding against my ribs, arm half-raised in a weak imitation of defense—

—and stop.

Adrian stands there. Not startled, not even remotely surprised.

If anything, his expression tilts toward amusement, the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth as if he’s been waiting for me to appear.

He’s dressed all in black, the sharp lines of his jacket catching the faint light, his sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows.

The watch at his wrist glints as he lifts a cup of coffee to his lips.

One dark brow lifts. “Really?”

My eyes drop to the spatula in my hand. Heat floods my face. “I—I didn’t know it was you.”

He steps forward, slow and deliberate. Before I can blink, the spatula is gone, slipped from my fingers. Something cold replaces it, pressing against the center of my chest. I look down.

A gun.

The weight of it isn’t much, but the meaning of it is heavy enough to still the air in my lungs. My gaze drags up to meet his. His eyes are unreadable, flat as stone.

“Don’t ever assume you’re safe,” he says, his voice calm, almost quiet, and all the more dangerous for it. “Not here. Not anywhere. Not even with me.”

The words settle deep, sharp. I don’t move. Don’t cry. Don’t breathe. I just nod slowly, because I understand.

He lowers the weapon, sliding it back into his pants without breaking eye contact, the movement smooth and practiced. Then he breathes out, a long, controlled exhale.

“I’m leaving.”

It takes me a moment to find my voice. “Leaving?”

He nods once, already walking past me, his shoulder brushing mine. The scent of leather and soap lingers in his wake.

“For how long?”

“A few days.” Nothing more.

The questions rise too fast to stop—what I’ll do while he’s gone, what happens if something goes wrong here, what happens if something happens to him. My voice comes out smaller than I expect. “Will… will you be safe?”

He stops mid-step, turns, and studies me. There’s no softness in his gaze, but something flickers there—something unreadable.

“Do you want me to be?”

The air feels thinner suddenly. My pulse jumps. I nod. “Yes.”

His mouth curves into something that isn’t a smile. “Maybe I will be. Maybe I won’t.”

He crosses to the console by the door, opens a drawer, and pulls out a sleek black box. Without ceremony, he hands it to me.

“Open it.”

Inside, cushioned by black velvet, is a phone. I’ve seen them before, in magazines, in store windows, but never this close, never in my hands. It looks fragile, expensive—like it belongs to another life entirely.

“It’s yours,” he says. “Three numbers. Mine. Logan’s. Mary’s.”

I hesitate to lift it, as though it might break under my touch.

“I expect you to answer if I call.”

I nod once. “Okay.”

He glances toward the door, his shoulders tightening like the act of leaving costs him something. Then, without another word, he unlocks it, steps out, and closes it behind him.

I’m left in the kitchen, barefoot, holding a phone that feels too sharp for my hands. The silence is thick again. Heavy.

He’s gone.

And I don’t know if that makes me feel safer… or more alone.

°°°°°

Adrian left yesterday.

It feels like longer.

The house is too big without him—not quieter, exactly, just…

emptier. The kind of emptiness that echoes, as though the walls themselves are waiting for someone to fill them.

Not a single clock ticks. No voices drift from room to room.

Even the guards, who usually pace the halls with steady, heavy steps, seem to have vanished.

Everything feels suspended, as though the whole place is holding its breath.

Maybe I am too.

Sleep came only in pieces last night. I kept thinking I heard the front door swing open, his footsteps coming down the hall, the sharp click of his voice calling for someone—calling for me.

But it was never him. Just the house settling, shadows shifting in the corners, the kind of stillness that plays tricks on you when you’re listening too hard.

When the faintest gray light seeped through the curtains, I woke.

Not because anyone knocked or an alarm dragged me up, but because my body still obeys an invisible schedule, one that’s been drilled into me for as long as I can remember.

I lay there for nearly an hour, watching the thin strip of light beneath the curtains grow brighter, feeling the weight of the day pressing at the edges of the silence.

Eventually, I got up—because I didn’t know what else to do.

I cleaned.

No one had asked. No one had told me to.

But my hands needed something to hold, and my mind needed something to keep it from drifting into places I didn’t want to go.

I moved slowly through the house, polishing picture frames in the hallway until my own reflection blurred in the glass, lining the books in the library so their spines stood perfectly straight.

I dusted baseboards no one would ever look at.

Every motion came with a quiet, nagging thought: Is this allowed? And, worse: Would he be mad?

The questions made my movements careful—soft steps, gentle cloths, the kind of touch that leaves no trace. I didn’t want to take up too much space. But I wanted, in some small way, to matter here.

By midmorning, my feet had carried me to the back garden.

It had been left to its own devices for weeks, maybe months—the hedges sagged inward like they’d given up on themselves, and the rosebushes tangled together as if they were trying to choke each other out.

Still, beneath the weeds and the wildness, I could see the shape of something beautiful, something worth saving.

I didn’t ask for permission. I just went to the shed, found a pair of rusted clippers and a pair of gloves stiff with age, and pulled my sleeves up past my elbows.

I knelt in the dirt and began. Clip. Pull.

Clear. Breathe. The work found its own rhythm, and for the first time all morning, the silence didn’t press so hard against my ears—it wrapped around me, easy and familiar, until I lost track of time entirely.

When I finally came back inside, dirt streaked my arms and petals clung to my hair like I’d been somewhere softer than I had. That’s when the idea came.

In the kitchen cabinets, I found three vases—dusty but intact—and washed them until they gleamed.

I filled them with roses, small daisies, sprigs of lavender, arranging each one until the colors felt right.

I carried them through the house like small offerings: one for the entryway table where the light spilled through the tall windows, one for the dining room’s endless polished surface, one for the narrow table at the base of the stairs.

The effect was small, but it shifted something—the air felt a touch warmer, the rooms less hollow.

But flowers fade. I wanted something that would stay.

So I pressed a few blooms between the heavy pages of a book I found in the living room, their delicate shapes flattening like fragile paper. I set them on the window ledge to dry, their colors softening in the sunlight. That’s when I heard footsteps in the hall.

Logan appeared in the doorway, a bag slung over one shoulder. He stopped when he saw the flowers spread out before me, his gaze flicking from them to me, his expression caught somewhere between suspicion and… something else.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I hesitated, my pulse quickening for reasons I couldn’t quite name. “I… I want to frame them. For the wall. But I don’t have anything to put them in.”

His eyes drifted over the flowers again, then back to mine. No teasing smirk, no sharp edge to his voice. Just a small shrug. “Alright. I’ll grab some.”

It took me a second to catch up. “You… will?”

“Yeah. Why not? You’re making this place less depressing. Might as well help.”

The words landed heavier than they should have. No one had ever said something like that to me before—like what I was doing here mattered. Like I wasn’t just existing inside someone else’s walls, but shaping them.

Making it less depressing.

I hadn’t realized until that moment that what I really wanted… was for it to feel more like home.

Logan returned not long after, carrying three heavy wooden frames still wrapped in thick brown paper.

He didn’t say anything—just set them down in front of me with the faintest nod, as though the act of bringing them was enough.

I ran my fingers over the coarse wrapping, feeling the weight of them through the paper, the edges solid and real beneath my touch.

My heart beat faster than it should have, as if something as simple as a frame could matter this much.

I didn’t hang them right away. I let them sit on the table beside me while I arranged and rearranged the pressed blooms, making sure every petal fell just so, that the lavender leaned in a way that looked effortless but wasn’t.

When I was finally satisfied, I slid the first one into place—lavender and wild rose, pale pink against the stark white paper—small, delicate, fragile. But it belonged there. I could feel it.

I chose the wall beside the hallway mirror.

Somewhere it would catch the light, somewhere people might notice without meaning to.

I stood back, biting my lip, my chest tight with questions I didn’t want to voice.

Will he notice? Will he care? And scarier still: Will he be angry I changed something?

I didn’t know the answers. I left it anyway.

By late afternoon, I was back in the garden, the sun pressing at the back of my neck, dirt settling into the crescents of my nails.

My shirt clung damp against my skin, but I kept moving, kept clipping, kept tending to the wild tangles until they began to give way.

I didn’t know where Adrian was, whether he was eating or sleeping or safe.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I knew it wasn’t supposed to matter.

But it did.

I kept thinking about the way he’d looked at me when I asked if he’d be okay—the half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes, the way he’d said maybe I will be, maybe I won’t as though it were a joke, though there was something darker curled behind it.

The not-knowing twisted something inside me.

And stranger still, I hated that I missed him.

But I did.

I missed his voice, sharp and certain. I missed the weight of his gaze.

I missed the way his presence sharpened the air, made every corner of the house feel defined, purposeful.

Without him, everything blurred at the edges, and I realized—quietly, uncomfortably—that I didn’t know how to exist without someone telling me where to be, what to do, how to move through the world.

So I filled the space he’d left behind. With flowers. With sunlight. With something living that might take root here.

And I hoped that when he returned, he’d see it.

And maybe he’d see me.

°°°°°

The city’s heat pressed against the glass like a living thing, thick and unmoving, as if the whole skyline was trying to press its weight against me.

Los Angeles had that effect—its glass towers gleamed, but it was all a fa?ade, the kind of place where you could walk for miles and never find anything real.

I didn’t come here for beauty. I came for business.

Business didn’t care that my mother left when I was seven, vanishing with nothing but a suitcase and a final glance that told me I was already someone else’s problem.

It didn’t care that the man left to raise me—the man who should’ve been a father—was a hollowed-out drunk with fists for answers and eyes that never held a single ounce of love.

Every day under his roof had been a lesson in endurance.

Five years ago, he died—alone, like he deserved—and if I felt anything about it, it was a satisfaction so faint it barely registered.

The world lost nothing when he went into the ground.

Those things didn’t matter here. They never did.

Business didn’t have space for childhoods or ghosts.

Business was clean, calculated, and unforgiving.

That’s why I was here—halfway across the country, sitting in a sterile office high above the streets, listening to a table of men who thought they were more important than they were.

They talked in circles about supply lines and partnerships, their voices scraping against my patience.

Every one of them wanted me to believe they had something to offer.

They didn’t. I wasn’t here to be charmed or convinced.

This was a scheduling necessity, a line item between real deals—between moments where power shifted and people bled for it.

I let them talk, leaning back in my chair, my expression flat enough to make them uneasy. Their words meant nothing. Noise. Always noise. I dealt in silence—the silence of an opponent realizing too late that they’d already lost.

But even here, with the air thick from the heat and their voices droning on, my mind began to slip. I didn’t give it permission. It just… happened.

It went to her.

Lily.

The girl sitting in my house right now, quiet enough to vanish into the walls, but somehow taking up more space in my head than she had any right to.

She didn’t fit anywhere in my world—not in the columns of profit and loss, not in the hierarchy of threats and allies.

She wasn’t business. She wasn’t family. She wasn’t anything I could name.

But she was there anyway, like smoke creeping under a locked door, finding its way into places it didn’t belong.

Did she try to run? Disappear while no one was looking?

The thought flickered, sharp and irritating, like catching sight of a loose thread you couldn’t stop pulling at.

But no. Logan would’ve told me. He’d been feeding me updates with the same detachment he used for financial reports—what she ate, where she went, how long she stayed there.

If she paced the halls or sat still for hours. Nothing out of place.

Still, I didn’t like that she crossed my mind at all.

I had deals to close, territories to lock down, enemies to watch. My attention was a weapon, and I didn’t waste it on things that didn’t matter. And yet, there she was. Not a person. Not exactly. More like a ghost—silent, lingering, impossible to name and harder to forget.

I shifted my gaze toward the two guards stationed by the door—broad-shouldered, stiff-backed, pretending their stillness meant authority. They were good at standing there, at looking like part of the furniture, but I wasn’t in the mood to be shadowed today.

“Get the fuck out,” I said, my voice flat, a dismissal rather than an order.

They didn’t question it. They never did. Just two short nods, the sound of boots against polished floors, and the door clicking shut behind them.

Silence.

I reached for my phone, the cool weight of it grounding me for half a second before my thumb was already moving, pulling up Logan’s number. First ring—nothing. Second ring—still nothing.

“Of course,” I muttered, the words half under my breath, slamming the phone back onto the desk with more force than necessary.

The sound cracked through the quiet. Figures.

Logan never answered when I actually needed him, and maybe that was his way of reminding me that I wasn’t the center of his fucking universe.

Or maybe he was just busy. Maybe he was ignoring me.

Hell, I wouldn’t have blamed him for either.

Still… he was the only one who’d been around long enough to be called something close to a friend. I’d never admit it out loud—not to him, not to anyone—but if there was ever a man who fit that description, it’d be Logan.

The guy who showed up without asking questions. Who kept his mouth shut when things turned ugly and there was nothing worth saying anyway. The man who knew when to back off and when to push harder. Who never lectured me about being the asshole I was, even when I knew I deserved every ounce of it.

Most people ran from my kind of mess. Logan stepped right into it, unflinching, like he’d already decided the dirt didn’t stick to him.

Sometimes I wondered why the hell he did it.

Why he stayed. But that was the difference between us—Logan didn’t care about the why.

He just cared that I was still standing.

And right now, even without meaning to, he was part of the reason my mind went somewhere I didn’t want it to go.

It twisted in me, low and unfamiliar, like someone pressing a hand against an old wound I thought had scarred over.

Nobody ever asked me that. Nobody had ever given enough of a damn to care if I was safe.

Safety had always been my own problem, my own burden.

But she had asked, even though she barely knew me.

Even though, to her, I should’ve been nothing more than a stranger who owned the walls she lived inside.

And for reasons I didn’t like examining too closely, that tiny shard of care stayed lodged there, sharp and immovable, like a stone I couldn’t swallow.

I picked the phone back up, my thumb hovering over her name.

The screen’s glow cut through the dim office light, casting a pale sheen across my hand.

For a second, I considered putting it down again—reminding myself there was no reason to call her.

No reason except that the thought of her sitting in that house, silent and unaccounted for, had been gnawing at the edges of my focus all day.

I pressed the call button anyway.

One ring.

Two.

Three.

I was about to hang up when the faintest whisper broke through the static.

“…Hello?”

She sounded small. Cautious. Like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to be speaking at all.

I didn’t answer right away, letting the quiet stretch. The line hissed faintly between us.

A beat later, her voice came again, tentative. “Hello? Is… someone there?” Then, softer still, almost like she thought she was talking to herself—“I don’t… really know how this works.”

“Lily,” I said finally, my voice low, unhurried.

On the other end, there was a quick intake of breath, sharp and startled. “…Adrian?”

I gave a short hum. “Yeah.”

For a second, she didn’t say anything, and then—“I just… I didn’t think it would be you.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” My tone stayed even, flat enough to pass for indifference. I wasn’t about to hand her anything more than that.

“I…” She hesitated, words stumbling over each other before she gave up and let the thought die. Then, quietly, “You’re… okay?”

“I wouldn’t be calling if I wasn’t,” I said, the words clipped, dismissive. “You stayed where you were told?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, the syllable almost tripping out of her mouth. “I didn’t try to go anywhere.”

A low hum left me, noncommittal but edged with approval. “Good.”

She went quiet after that. Not the silence of someone with nothing to say—more the kind that waited to see what I’d say next.

I didn’t make her wait long. “Anything out of the ordinary?” I asked. "I don’t like surprises Lily.”

“No,” she said softly. “Everything’s the same.”

I leaned back in my chair, the leather creaking. “Good.”

Another pause, and then she added, as if testing whether it mattered enough to tell me, “I… cleaned. The house.”

My brow twitched. “What else?”

Her voice lowered, the hesitation obvious. “I cleaned your office too. Things were… scattered. Like someone had… thrown them. Papers everywhere.”

The memory hit hard—whiskey burning down my throat, glass breaking, wood splintering beneath my fists. The deal gone to shit. The men I couldn’t bring back. The rage that had gutted me until the room was in ruins.

“You look through anything?” My tone dropped, colder now. “There were documents in there. Photos. Things you don’t touch.”

She stumbled over the words. “I… I didn’t look. Not for long. I just put the papers back—almost where they were—and picked things up. That’s all. I swear.”

The last part was quiet, but there was steel in it.

I let out a slow breath through my nose. “…Fine, thank you.”

The line had barely settled into silence again when a sharp voice cut in from her end.

The line had barely settled into silence again when a voice cut in on her end.

“What!?”

Footsteps crossed the background—measured, unhurried—and then Logan’s voice came through, loud and amused. “Fifteen years of knowing you, and I’ve barely gotten one thank you. She gets one right away? You piece of shit”

There was a pause, the faint rustle of movement, and then Lily’s voice—soft, uncertain, barely more than a breath. “…That’s… rude.” She said it like she wasn’t sure she should, each word placed carefully, as though speaking too much might get her in trouble.

“Oh, come on, princess,” Logan drawled, easy and teasing, “he can handle it.”

The word snapped through me before I had time to think. My hand tightened against the desk, my jaw going hard. It was nothing—just a name—but it was mine to give if I ever chose to, not his.

“Don’t fucking call her that,” I said, my voice cutting in fast, sharper than I intended.

The silence that followed was weighted. I could picture the look Logan would be wearing—eyebrows up, the faintest hint of a grin he wouldn’t bother to hide.

“Well, well,” he said finally, a chuckle threading through the words, “message received.” No pushback, no argument, but I could hear the understanding in his tone. The kind that didn’t need to be spelled out.

I didn’t bother explaining myself. Couldn’t.

I didn’t even know why I’d said it. I just knew I didn’t like hearing it from him—didn’t like the idea of him putting something in her head that didn’t come from me.

It was irrational. Pointless. But the possessiveness was there now, solid and immovable, and it stayed coiled in me even as the conversation moved on.

Then Lily’s voice came again, small and deliberate. “…I should start dinner soon. Am I… allowed to do that?”

She wasn’t asking Logan. He was right there with her, but she didn’t even glance his way—not in her voice, not in her choice of words. She asked me.

Even from across the country, she was waiting for my word. My permission.

“Yes,” I said, letting it stretch, feeling the weight of it settle between us.

That single syllable was enough to shift something inside me.

She could’ve asked Logan. She could’ve just started cooking without a word.

But she didn’t. She needed my go-ahead, and that meant my reach didn’t end at a city line.

It went further. It stayed wrapped around her even when I wasn’t there.

“There are people to do that,” I added, not because I cared about the work, but because I wanted to remind her that she didn’t need to lift a finger unless I wanted her to.

“I know,” she said softly. “I just… like to.”

Her voice was careful again, and I caught the smallest hint of something else in it—not defiance, exactly, but the sound of someone who still understood where the lines were drawn.

And for the first time all day, I felt like I was exactly where I needed to be.

She hung up after that, the line going dead with a soft click.

I didn’t move right away. Just sat there, phone still in my hand, staring at the dark screen until my reflection came into focus.

It should’ve been nothing—just making sure she stayed put, that she wasn’t a problem I’d have to clean up from halfway across the country. That was all.

I told myself that. Twice.

The lie held for maybe three seconds before it cracked. Because it wasn’t about her staying put. Not really. It was about the way she’d asked. Not Logan. Me.

I leaned forward, dragging open the top desk drawer until my fingers found the half-empty pack of cigarettes I’d been ignoring for months. I’d told myself I was cutting down—no more chain-smoking my way through a night—but right now I needed one.

The lighter clicked, the flame flaring in the dim office light. I breathed in slow, the first drag hitting deep, familiar. The burn tasted like old habits and bad decisions, curling in my lungs before I exhaled toward the ceiling.

I’d had women hanging off me for years. Models.

Dancers. The kind of girls who didn’t even let me finish talking before they were saying yes.

I kept them in my phone under first names only, and even those were guesses half the time.

Some mornings I’d wake up next to one and have no idea what city I was in, much less her name.

It was easy. Forgettable. Disposable.

Exactly the way I liked it.

But Lily—

I tried to shove her into that same pile. I really did. But every time I closed the lid on that box, she pushed her way back out, quiet and stubborn, until she was there again, waiting in the back of my mind like she’d never left.

It pissed me off.

I took another drag, letting the smoke curl between my fingers as I thought about the way her voice had dipped when she said, Am I allowed? I shouldn’t have liked that. I shouldn’t have felt anything at all.

She wasn’t mine. Not really.

And yet—there it was again. That pull I didn’t want to name.

I ground the cigarette out in the ashtray, forcing the thoughts out the same way I’d force smoke from a stale room.

Focus. Work. Numbers. Deals. Not her.

But no matter how much I buried it, she stayed. Pressed into the cracks of my mind like she belonged there.

And I hated it.

°°°°°

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