4. Chapter 4 #2
His voice is different now. The grit is still there, but the edges have softened into something raw and honest. He repeats the words like a mantra. I keep my hand over his, a silent anchor.
Slowly, the thrashing stops. Iris's breathing hitches, then levels out. She sighs, long and trembling, and her grip on the stuffed owl loosens. She doesn't wake up, but the terror has receded.
We don't move.
The silence isn't peaceful. It's heavy, charged with everything we aren't saying. I can feel him looking at me.
"How did you know how to do that?" he asks.
He doesn't pull his hand away. My palm is still resting on the back of his.
"My brother had them," I say. "Night terrors. My mother was always working, so I became the expert in boring talk."
I stop. Something slips through before I can catch it.
"I used to be so scared I'd do it wrong and he'd wake up worse."
The words land before I can pull them back. Small. Factual. They cost me in a way I didn't plan for. Graham goes still beside me. Not the stillness he uses as a weapon. The stillness of a man who has just been handed something he wasn't expecting and is being careful not to drop it.
I don't look at him. I keep my eyes on Iris.
"It's about grounding them in the physical world before the dream pulls them under," I say, my voice back to its professional register.
Graham shifts his weight. His shoulder brushes mine. The contact sends a jolt through me that has nothing to do with childcare. He's close enough that I can see the dark stubble on his jaw, the shadows his eyelashes cast over his cheekbones. He looks younger when he's this tired.
Younger and more dangerous.
"I thought I could control this," he says, barely a whisper. "The house, the board, the lawyers. I thought if I just moved us here and fixed the walls, she'd be okay. I'm a billionaire, Jade. I'm supposed to be able to buy my way out of grief."
I look at him. Truly look at him. He isn't asking for pity. He's admitting a failure he can't bear.
"You can't out-muscle a ghost, Graham. And you can't renovate a broken heart. You just have to sit in the dark with it until the sun comes up."
He turns his hand over beneath mine, lacing our fingers together. Not a romantic gesture. A desperate one. His grip is firm, his palm rough. For a second the suit and the empire disappear, and there's just a man trying not to drown.
I don't pull away. I squeeze back.
His fingers are dry and warm against mine. He's my boss. He's a Sterling. He's everything I've spent my life learning to avoid. But right now, he's just a father who doesn't know how to save his daughter.
"You should go back to sleep," he says, though he doesn't let go. "The investigator is coming tomorrow."
"I'm not going anywhere until you do. You're shaking, Graham."
He looks down at our joined hands and realizes I'm right. His fingers are trembling. He exhales through his teeth and pulls his hand away to rub his face.
The absence is immediate and cold.
"I'll stay with her," he says, voice regaining some of that familiar iron-clad steadiness. "Thank you, Jade. I mean it."
I stand up and smooth my nightshirt. I walk toward the door, feeling his eyes on my back. I stop at the threshold and look back.
He's sitting where I left him, head bowed, watching his daughter sleep. He looks small in that massive bed. A giant brought to his knees by a six-year-old's nightmare.
I make it back to the carriage house but I don't go to sleep. I sit by the window and watch the lights in the main house go out one by one, until only the light in Iris's room remains.
It stays on for a long time.
In the morning, the lake is a mirror of grey glass.
September has settled into Linden Lake with cooler mornings and the first real bite of autumn in the wind off the water.
I'm making coffee when Graham walks in. Back in the suit.
Navy blue, perfectly tailored, the armor of a man who didn't spend the night trembling on a child's bed.
He looks at me, and for a second the memory is right there between us, live and unaddressed.
"Coffee?" I ask, holding up the pot.
"Black. Two cups. I have a call with the board in ten minutes."
He takes the mug. Our fingers brush. Just a second of contact. Enough to thin the air in the kitchen. He doesn't look away this time. He stares at me over the rim of the cup, his gaze intense and unreadable.
"About last night."
"We don't have to talk about it. It was a bad night."
He sets the mug down with a sharp clack. "I don't like being seen like that, Jade. Vulnerable."
"Noted. I'll add it to the list of things I'm contractually obligated to forget."
"What list."
"It's a long list, Sterling. It includes the way you make coffee for two people every morning and pretend the second cup is for the construction crew."
His jaw works. He doesn't deny it.
"Don't expect me to pretend I didn't see it. I'm the nanny, not a houseplant. My job is to see the things you're trying to hide."
He lets out a short, dry laugh. "You're impossible. You know that?"
"I've been told. I prefer thorough."
He takes a step closer. The kitchen island is the only thing between us, and it feels like an insufficient barrier. The edge is gone from his gaze. Replaced by a simmering tension that makes the hair on my arms rise.
"The board is pushing for a family-first reset," he says, his voice dropping an octave. "The Whitlocks have convinced them that a single father with a record is a liability for the merger. They want stability. They want a story they can sell to the press."
A prickle of unease. "And what does that have to do with me?"
"Everything. You're the only person Iris has responded to in months. You're the only person who doesn't look at me like I'm a ticking time bomb. And you're the only person who knows exactly how high the stakes are."
The front doorbell rings. Loud, aggressive, echoing through the hollowed-out house.
Graham's face hardens, the mask sliding back into place.
"The investigator," he says, picking up his coffee. "Try to look like you like me, Jade. It's for the court."
"I'm a great actress. But let's not get carried away. I'm here for the kid, not the man in the suit."
He stops. Looks back at me. A wolfish smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.
"We'll see about that."
He walks toward the door before I can come up with a comeback that doesn't sound like agreement.
I do not, I tell myself, have a problem.
The doorbell rings a second time.