19. Rules Dont Protect Anyone
Chapter nineteen
Rules Don't Protect Anyone
Atticus POV
Jordan's gone.
Delia's gone.
The suite is quiet in the particular way it gets when the performance has just ended and neither of us has figured out how to stop performing.
Sienna is standing three feet away from me with her arms crossed, not defensively, just contained, and her lipstick is slightly smudged from a kiss that was supposed to be for a camera and wasn't, and I am having a very focused internal conversation with myself about not looking at her mouth.
I lose.
I look.
She catches me.
Neither of us says anything for a second that stretches too long to be comfortable.
I feel the kiss still. Not physically. Something worse than physically.
The way her hand had fisted in my shirt without her deciding to.
The sound she made when we broke apart, quiet and unguarded, before she remembered where we were.
That sound has been living in my chest for the last twenty minutes and I don't have anywhere to put it.
She drops her arms.
Turns toward the window.
The city does its thing outside, indifferent and bright and noisy, and Sienna watches it like she's waiting for it to tell her something useful. Her shoulders are set. Spine straight. The posture she uses when she's working something out and doesn't want anyone to see the process.
I know that posture. I've been cataloguing her tells for weeks without meaning to, without admitting what that meant.
She's rattled.
She's hiding it the same way I'm hiding it, which means we're both standing in this suite pretending the last ten minutes didn't happen, and we are both very bad liars when it counts.
I want to go to her. Cross the room. Put my hands on her shoulders and turn her around and finish what I started when the camera was still rolling.
I don't.
I stand exactly where I am and I breathe through it, and I watch her reflection in the window glass, and she is so relentlessly, inconveniently herself that something in my gut goes quiet and certain in a way I have no language for and no interest in finding any.
I cross to the kitchen. Pull out two waters from the fridge. Set one on the counter beside her without making it a gesture.
She takes it.
Progress.
"We should talk about the rules," I say.
"We just kissed in front of a camera crew." Her voice is even. "Seems like the rules already have opinions."
"That's what I mean."
She turns. Looks at me directly, the way she does when she's deciding how honest to be. I've learned to wait through it. Pushing her just makes her sharper.
"You want to renegotiate," she says.
"I want to be honest." I set my water down. "Which is different."
"Is it."
"I think so."
She tilts her head, a fraction, just enough to mean convince me, and I take that as permission to keep going.
"No more contact that only happens on camera." I keep my voice level. "That's not a boundary. That's a performance schedule."
She doesn't argue. She's listening.
"And you don't handle your father alone. Not a negotiation point. Not something we revisit every time he shows up. Just — no."
"That one," she says, "sounds like control dressed up as protection."
"I know how it sounds."
"Do you?"
"Yes." I hold her gaze. "I also know the difference."
She's quiet. Not convinced, but not dismissing it either.
She uncaps her water and takes a slow sip, and I watch her think, and I'm aware that I've had this specific argument with myself a hundred times, the one about how protecting someone and possessing them are not the same thing, and I've never been less certain I'm right.
"You have a pattern," she says finally. "You decide what people can handle. You make the call without asking. Then you tell yourself it was for them." She pauses. "Your brother said it. Jonah could've said it. I'm saying it."
The accuracy of it lands clean.
I don't defend myself. There's no version of a defense that isn't just the pattern in action.
"You're right," I say.
She blinks. Just slightly. Like that wasn't the move she expected.
"So ask," she says. "Don't decide. Ask me what I need and then let me tell you."
"What do you need?"
"Not to be managed."
"Okay."
"Not to be handled."
"Okay."
"And not to be—" She stops. Exhales through her nose. Sets the water bottle down. "Not to be the thing you're protecting instead of the person you're talking to."
The distinction hits somewhere I don't have armor for.
I look at her, really look, the way I've been not letting myself look since the camera crew left, and she's watching me with those sharp, careful eyes, and beneath the sharpness there's something that isn't armor at all. Something that knows exactly what it's asking.
"Then I'll ask," I say. "And I'll listen to the answer."
She holds my gaze for a beat. Two.
"Fine," she says. Low. Almost quiet. "Same terms, amended. We're honest. No camera-only contact." She pauses. "And I tell you before I go anywhere near my father. I don't promise I'll let you come. But I'll tell you."
It's not everything.
It's more than she's given anyone in a long time. I can see that clearly enough to know I shouldn't say it out loud.
"Deal," I say.
The space between us does something then. Shifts. Compresses slightly, like pressure dropping before a storm, and her eyes drop to my mouth for the first time and I feel the pull of it so sharply I actually go still.
She feels it too. I know she does.
Her hand moves, barely, just lifting from the counter, and then stops.
I don't close the distance. I want to. Every single thing in me wants to. But I told her I'd ask, and I meant it, and this isn't the moment to make a liar of myself.
"Sienna."
Her eyes come back up.
"I want—"
My phone goes off.
We both ignore it.
It goes off again.
I hold her gaze for one more second, long enough for her to understand the sentence I didn't finish, then I pick it up.
Delia.
Of course it's Delia.
I answer. She talks. I stand with my back half-turned toward Sienna because if I watch her face right now I will not process a single word Delia says, and Delia is using her everything-is-under-control-except-nothing-is voice, which means I need to pay attention.
"Maplewood Estates wants a weekend feature," Delia says. "Couples branding content. Pastoral, intimate, organic. Their social team will be there but low-footprint, mostly drone and candid. The property is gorgeous. Fireplace, lake view, custom everything."
"When."
"This weekend. I know it's fast. The window is—"
"Fine." I'm watching the city out the window now because it's safer than watching Sienna. "Whatever you need."
"There's one more thing."
The tone of it makes me turn back around.
Sienna is leaning against the counter with her arms loose at her sides, reading me. She's gotten good at reading me. Better than almost anyone I've stood in a room with.
"The property has one primary suite," Delia says. "One bed. The layout tests significantly better for the brand content than a two-room setup. The authenticity reads—"
"Delia."
"It tests well, Atticus. I need you both on board."
I look at Sienna.
Sienna looks at me.
Delia is still talking, I know she's still talking, I can hear her, but the sound of her has gone oddly distant because Sienna's expression just shifted into something I don't have a clean category for. Not alarm. Not refusal. Just wide open, for exactly one second, before the guard comes back.
Her breath catches.
Quiet. Almost inaudible.
I heard it.
I close my mouth. Open it. Close it again.
"I'll call you back," I tell Delia, and hang up.
The suite is very, very quiet.
Sienna's jaw is set. Her eyes are on mine.
Neither of us speaks.
Outside, the city goes on without us, loud and entirely unhelpful, and I think about amended agreements and one beds that test well and the sentence I didn't finish, and I think: we are so far past the original terms it is almost funny.
Almost.