20. One Bed, Two Liars
Chapter twenty
One Bed, Two Liars
Sienna POV
The cabin is absurd.
That's my first thought when the car pulls up the gravel drive and the headlights sweep across the front porch. Log exterior, stone chimney, two rocking chairs side by side like someone staged it from a catalog titled Rustic Romance, Volume Four.
My second thought is that Delia Vance has never spent a single night of her life being subtle.
The driver takes our bags. I take in the matching flannel throw blankets folded over the porch railing, the soft amber glow bleeding through the front windows, and I make a decision: I will not let this cabin make me feel things.
I am a professional. I work in hospitality.
I have managed worse atmospheres than this with a smile and a tray of drinks.
I open the front door and immediately smell cedar and wood smoke.
My professionalism takes a small hit.
The fire is already going. Of course it is.
There are two mugs on the kitchen counter, a handwritten card from Delia explaining the content schedule for tomorrow, and a basket of local goods that probably cost more than my weekly liquor order.
Someone on her team drove up here ahead of us and nested.
Atticus sets his bag down at the door and does a slow visual sweep of the space.
I do what I always do when I need a second to regroup. I walk further into the room.
The bedroom is through the door on the left.
I don't mean to clock the bed immediately. I do it anyway. One large, high-framed, flannel-sheeted, singularly unambiguous bed taking up most of the room. There are two pillows on each side, which is almost funny. The effort of it. The optimism.
Behind me, Atticus's footsteps stop in the doorway.
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
"I'll take the couch," he says.
I turn around. He's leaning against the doorframe, arms loose at his sides, already looking like a man prepared to spend an uncomfortable night on a piece of furniture three sizes too small for him because he decided it was the right call and that's simply that.
"Stop performing martyrdom," I say.
Something crosses his face. "I'm not—"
"You're doing the face." I gesture at his face. "The one that means you've already decided something for both of us and you're waiting for me to agree so you can feel like you did the honorable thing."
A pause. "I don't have a face."
"You have several faces. That's one of them." I drop my bag on the near side of the bed. "It's a big bed. You're not a threat. Go unpack."
He looks at me for one long, assessing second.
Then he picks up his bag.
The camera crew arrives at nine sharp.
There are three of them. A shooter, a sound tech, and a woman named Bree who Delia has clearly briefed within an inch of her life, because she produces a shot list from her clipboard like a surgeon producing a scalpel and explains that today is about authentic intimacy in a tone that makes it sound like a military operation.
Atticus, standing beside me with a coffee mug and approximately four hours of sleep, says, "Sure."
I say, "Wonderful," and mean neither word.
The morning is fine. More than fine, if I'm being honest with myself, which I'm trying not to be.
We make breakfast on camera. Him at the stove because it turns out Atticus Knox can actually cook, which is deeply inconvenient information.
We're easy with each other in a way I didn't plan for.
He hands me things before I ask for them.
I make a comment about his technique and he fires back without missing a beat, and Bree makes a little noise of delight behind the camera that I pretend not to hear.
We do the sit-down interview on the couch. Bree asks about how we got together. We run the story we built in the hotel suite. The bar, the slow burn, the moment things shifted. It comes out clean and practiced, the way a good lie does when you've told it enough times.
Then she asks what I love about him.
I have an answer for this. We practiced it. It's about his loyalty, his protectiveness, the way he shows up for people who matter to him.
I start to say it.
And what comes out instead is: "He doesn't tell me what I can handle."
Bree leans forward, delighted.
Atticus goes still beside me. I feel it without looking.
"He just—" I stop. Tilt my head like I'm considering.
"He waits. He gives me the space to decide things myself, and then he shows up after.
There's a difference between protecting someone and controlling them, and he knows the difference.
" I almost smile and don't quite finish it. "Most of the time."
The camera gets his reaction. I know because I finally glance over and catch it. The way his expression has gone completely quiet. Not the controlled quiet. The other kind. The kind that means something landed somewhere he wasn't guarding.
He recovers in under a second.
"She undersells herself," he says to the camera. His voice is even. "She'd handle anything with or without me. I just try to be useful."
Bree actually sighs.
I look back at my coffee.
The crew packs up at ten.
The door shuts behind them and the cabin goes quiet so fast it almost has a sound.
I take the kettle off the stove. He sits at the kitchen table. Neither of us moves toward the bedroom or the couch or the question we've been orbiting since we got here.
"Tired?" I ask.
"Yes."
Two syllables. The same tone he used in the interview. I don't know why it makes me want to push at it.
"Long day for someone who doesn't have a face," I say.
He makes a sound that's almost a laugh. Almost. "Go to bed, Sienna."
"I'm getting there."
I carry my mug to the sink. Rinse it. Keep my back to him for a moment longer than I need to.
"You didn't have to say that," he says behind me. "The thing about the difference between protecting and controlling."
I turn around. He's still at the table, one hand wrapped around his mug, looking at me with an expression I can't read fully and don't trust myself to try.
"It's true," I say.
"I know. That's not—" He stops. His thumb moves along the rim of the mug. "I just mean you didn't owe it to the camera."
I look at him for a long beat.
"I wasn't saying it to the camera."
We don't address it.
That's the agreement we reach without speaking.
The same way we've reached most of our agreements, in the negative space between sentences.
We brush our teeth on opposite ends of a bathroom that smells like pine soap.
I change in the closet. He gives me his back while I get into bed, which is both unnecessary and oddly sweet, and I file that observation away in the growing folder I've labeled Things I Am Not Examining Right Now.
He gets in on the other side.
The fire has burned down to low. The room is dim and warm and smells like cedar, and the bed is enormous and also, somehow, not large enough.
We lie there in the particular silence of two people pretending they're close to sleep when they're both extremely awake.
"You want to know something stupid?" I say.
"Always."
"I looked up the Tridents' stats before I agreed to this." I stare at the ceiling. "Not the team stats. Yours. Individually."
Silence.
"Why?"
"I wanted leverage." I pull the blanket higher. "I wanted to know the weak points so that if you started pulling rank on me I'd have something to counter with."
"Did it work?"
"Not really. Your stats are very good. It was annoying."
He makes the not-quite-laugh sound again. Closer this time. "I looked up your reviews."
I turn my head. He's looking at the ceiling too. "What reviews?"
"O'Malley's." His voice is casual. "Before the arrangement. I looked up the bar. Read the reviews." A pause. "Someone called you terrifying in a four-star rating. Said you threw them out for harassing a server and they'd still go back."
I feel my mouth curve. "Todd. He tips thirty percent now."
"There were forty-seven reviews that mentioned you by name."
"I have a presence."
"You have a following." He finally turns his head. His eyes meet mine in the low light. "There's a difference."
I'm quiet for a moment.
"Why did you look me up?" I ask.
Something moves through his expression, unguarded for just a second, and it does something inconvenient to my chest.
"Same reason," he says. "Different application."
I think about asking what that means. I decide I already know.
"What are you actually afraid of?" I ask instead. The question comes out softer than I intended. The dark makes it easier to say things.
He's quiet long enough that I wonder if he'll answer.
"Failing people I claimed," he says at last. "Thinking I'm protecting someone and finding out I was just making it easier for myself to sleep.
" He exhales slowly. "My father was good at that.
Calling it love. Making it look like care.
" His voice is flat, not bitter. Like he's described the architecture of something he's already walked through and catalogued. "I swore I wouldn't—" He stops.
"You're not him," I say.
"I know."
"I'm telling you I know. Not as a comfort. As a fact." I hold his gaze. "I've spent a lot of my life around men who dress control up as care. I can tell the difference. You're working on it." I let that land. "That's not nothing."
His expression does something I don't have a name for.
"What are you afraid of?" he asks. Returns it evenly. Like it's the fair thing to do.
I look back at the ceiling.
"Being wrong," I say. "About someone I let in.
" I'm quiet for a moment. "My father—" I stop.
Start over. "I learned to read people young because I had to.
I got good at it. And then I still got it wrong, with him, over and over, and every time I thought maybe this time, maybe now, and he just—" I close my eyes briefly.
"I'm afraid of being that person again. The one who keeps giving someone the benefit of a doubt they haven't earned. "
The cabin is quiet.
"You're not wrong about me," Atticus says. Low. Careful. Like he's handing something over.
"I know." And I do. That's the terrifying part.
"I'm tired," he says. Not deflecting. Something else. Something stripped back. Like he's been holding the word for hours and finally put it down.
"Of what?"
"Deciding what I'm allowed to want." His voice is quiet. "Of running the calculation every time."
I don't have an answer for that. I lie there with it and feel the truth of it settle in my chest like something familiar. Like something I've been running the same calculation on for months and calling it strategy.
The fire pops once. Settles.
Under the blanket, in the dark, his hand moves. Doesn't reach across the space between us. Doesn't close the distance. Just rests there, an inch from mine. Present. Available. The choice left entirely to me.
I feel it the way I'd feel a question.
I stare at the ceiling and think about the camera crew and Delia's shot list and the arrangement and every rule we wrote in my kitchen that morning that I understood at the time and have been understanding less and less every day since.
His hand stays where it is. Patient. Unhurried.
"Tell me to stop," he murmurs.
The fire breathes.
I don't.