Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
NADIA
I gave him three days.
Three days of being patient. Of telling myself he was grieving, and that grief didn't run on anyone else's schedule. Of replaying the way he'd looked in that alley, hands braced against the brick, fighting whatever was happening inside him, and deciding that pushing him wasn't the right call.
On the fourth morning, I woke at five, lay in the dark above my parents' garage, and had a very honest conversation with myself.
I was doing it again.
I'd done this in the military too. Watched things deteriorate, told myself it wasn't as bad as it looked, waited for someone else to address the problem. Every time, without exception, waiting had made it worse.
Daemon wouldn't open that door on his own. Hell, he hadn't even answered the text I'd sent him on Sunday. The parking lot had already told me he wouldn't. I could keep being patient, or I could go find out what we were actually dealing with.
I was at Sofia's by eight.
He answered on the second knock, barefoot, in jeans and a gray t-shirt, coffee in hand. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping well. That made two of us.
"Nadia." Something moved behind his eyes. Relief, maybe, or the anticipation of a conversation he knew was coming. "Hey."
"Can I come in?"
He stepped back to let me through.
The apartment was its usual cheerful assault of chintz and porcelain, something I usually found oddly comforting. Right now I barely noticed it. I turned to face him in the middle of the small living room and didn't give either of us time to ease into it.
"Are you in this or not?"
He looked at me. Set his coffee down on the doily-covered side table. "What does that mean?"
"It means exactly what it sounds like. Three days ago you shut me out in a parking lot. Before that, it was the drive home after the meeting. Before that, it was every conversation where anything about the future came up."
I kept my voice level. Calm. The way I'd learned to deliver bad news in the Army. "I need to know if you're still here."
"I'm standing right in front of you."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it."
He ran a hand through his hair. Looked away, then back. "I've been having a hard time of it, Nadia."
"I know you have. And I'm sorry about your mom, I genuinely am. But this started before the anniversary." I watched him. "Something changed after the meeting. You've been pulling back ever since, and I need you to tell me why."
"I haven't been pulling back. I've been processing."
"For three weeks?"
"Is there a deadline I missed?"
The edge in his voice was new. I felt the flare of anger and let it pass before I spoke again. "I'm not giving you a deadline. I'm trying to understand what's happening between us, because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're getting ready to leave."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Then where have you been?"
That landed. I watched it land, watched him absorb it, and waited.
"I don't know how to do this," he said finally. His voice had shifted. The edge was gone. "I don't know how to be what you need without failing you the way I've failed everyone else."
"You haven't failed me."
"Not yet."
The words sat between us. I looked at him, this man I'd spent six weeks trusting and three weeks watching retreat, and felt the anger drain into something quieter and more complicated.
"That's not something I can fix for you," I said. "You know that."
"I know."
"And I can't keep waiting for you to decide if I'm worth the risk."
He closed his eyes briefly. "You are. That's the problem."
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"So what happens now?" I said.
He looked at me squarely. "I think I need to figure some things out."
I nodded. I'd known that was coming. Knowing didn't make it land any softer. "Then figure them out."
"Nadia—"
"If you're going to run, then run. But do it now. Don't drag it out."
"There's something else." His words came quickly. I stopped with my hand on the door. "Malakai called the night of the Peterson event. There's footage from the venue kitchen. Someone was in there Saturday afternoon, but the file's too big to send. He needs us both to come in and view it."
I turned back slowly. "He called on the night of the event."
"Yes."
"That was four days ago, Daemon."
He said nothing.
I stood there and let that sit, right alongside everything else.
Four days. While I'd been giving him space and running my business and not following up on a deliberate act of sabotage against my company, the footage had been sitting in Malakai's office waiting for a conversation Daemon couldn't bring himself to start.
"He doesn't know who it is?" I said.
"Not yet."
I'd been so tangled up in the mess between us that I'd dropped the ball on the sabotage.
Hadn't followed up the way I should have.
My business had been deliberately targeted, and I'd let it slide because I was too busy waiting on a man who couldn't decide if he wanted to stay.
That made me angrier than anything else.
"Text me the time," I said.
"Nadia—"
"Strictly business, Daemon."
He said nothing.
I nodded once. Opened the door. Stepped out into Sofia's garden, where the roses were coming up and the morning air was cool and clean and entirely indifferent to the fact that I'd just walked out of something I hadn't wanted to leave.
I made it to my van. Got in. Closed the door.
Sat there with both hands on the wheel and my eyes fixed on the windshield while I reminded myself how to breathe.
Then I started the engine and drove away.
I had a business to run. Vendors to call. A collective to launch and a corporation to fight and parents who needed me and a sister's kids who called me every Sunday.
I had all of that.
I didn't let myself cry until I was three blocks away.
I had a business luncheon that afternoon. I knew that because it was on the schedule, and because the schedule was the thing I fell back on when everything else stopped making sense.
The Army had taught me that. When you're running on nothing, you run on the schedule. Complete the task. Don't stop moving until the mission is done.
The luncheon was for a tech consultancy in the new office park on Marchetti. Forty people, a working lunch, salmon and salad and a dessert spread. My team was capable, the food was good, the client shook my hand and said they'd book again.
I smiled and thanked them, loaded up the van, and drove back to the commercial kitchen. Then I sat in my small office and didn't move for a while.
The thing about being the responsible one was that you got very good at knowing what the feelings were without letting them run the show.
I knew what this was. The hollowness of believing something would hold and finding out it wouldn't. What I hadn't felt before was this specific version. The weight of being wrong about a person you'd been so certain of.
My phone had three texts. Holly. My mother, a photo of Emma at her follow-up appointment. Kelly, with a website update. Nothing from Daemon. I answered all three and went home.
I drove back to my parents' house and climbed the stairs to the apartment above the garage. Small space, familiar sounds. My parents’ television murmuring through the floor.