19. Talia
Talia
For a few seconds, I leave it where it is, letting myself pretend the apartment is still exactly as it was when I fell asleep. The room is quiet with the pale morning light slipping around the edges of the curtains.
Flynn is still asleep down the hall. Declan is beside me, his breathing slow and steady, one arm stretched across the mattress where I’d been lying only moments ago.
Last night feels almost unreal in the soft light. Not because it didn’t happen, but because it did. Because after seven years of convincing myself there wouldn’t be another chance, waking up beside him feels fragile in a way I don’t quite trust yet.
The phone vibrates again, then immediately a third time, sharp enough that I finally reach across the nightstand before it wakes the rest of the apartment.
The screen lights beneath my hand, and the quiet I’d been holding onto disappears all at once. Rebecca. Sloane. Two voicemails. Half a dozen emails marked urgent. Four news alerts.
More notifications stack over the first before I’ve managed to read it, each one pushing another out of place until I can barely tell where one ends and the next begins. I don’t know what’s happened yet, but I know this feeling.
Yesterday began the same way. The same knot settling low in my stomach, the same sense that the day I thought I was going to have is already slipping out from under me.
Beside me, Declan shifts against the pillow, blinking sleep from his eyes before looking over at me. "What is it?"
"I don't know." My voice comes out quieter than I intended. It's the only answer I have, even if it isn't entirely true.
I don't know the details, but I know enough to recognize the warning signs. Sloane never calls before seven unless something has gone very wrong, and Rebecca would never leave three messages before breakfast unless she thought I needed to see them immediately.
My thumb hovers over Sloane's text before I finally open it.
Call me before you respond to anyone.
Rebecca's message sits directly underneath.
Please don't look online until we talk.
For a moment, I actually consider listening to them. Then I tap the first news alert. The headline fills the screen before the photograph beneath it finishes loading.
CROSSRIDGE EXECUTIVE LEAVES WOMAN’S HOME WITH CHILD—QUESTIONS RAISED
I don't feel surprised, only tired.
The photograph sharpens a heartbeat later, and my chest tightens. Someone photographed us yesterday.
Flynn is walking toward the SUV with his backpack hanging from one shoulder while Declan stays close behind us, his hand resting lightly against Flynn’s back. Marcus is already waiting beside the vehicle, holding the rear door open.
It’s an ordinary moment. The kind I wouldn’t have looked at twice if it belonged to anyone else. Looking at it now, I realize ordinary doesn’t survive once someone decides to turn it into a headline.
I scroll through the next two photographs before I read the article. Different angles. Different seconds. The same three people. By the time I reach the first paragraph, I already know the story isn’t going to match the life I lived yesterday. It never does.
Declan reaches over before I can scroll any farther, gently taking the phone from my hand. He doesn’t rush. He reads every line once, then scrolls back to the photographs, studying them longer than the words beneath them.
By the time he lowers the phone, his expression has settled into the same careful calm I’ve seen in board meetings, hostile negotiations, and more crises than I can count.
Only now do I know him well enough to recognize the difference between calm and control. This isn’t calm. It’s the look he gets when he’s already working three steps ahead, solving the problem before anyone else realizes how bad it is.
"They were waiting," he says quietly.
I pull my knees up beneath the blankets, watching him instead of the phone. "What do you mean?"
"They weren't following us." He taps the first photograph with his thumb before handing the phone back to me.
"If they had been, we'd have pictures from the street before we reached the car.
Instead, the first shot is already framed.
They knew where we'd come out, and they were already in position. "
I look at the photograph again because he clearly sees something I don’t.
All I see is Flynn walking toward the SUV, too aware for a six-year-old of what the last two days have been.
I see myself trying to keep him moving without making him feel rushed, Declan staying close enough that, at the time, I hadn’t even thought about it.
Looking at it now, I don’t notice camera angles or escape routes. I notice my son. That’s the part that hurts the most. They didn’t just find us. They found him.
The phone vibrates again in my hand.
This time I don’t have to look at the screen to know it’s someone from Ashcroft.
The ringtone barely stops before another notification appears, followed almost immediately by another email sliding across the top of the display.
I silence the call, but the quiet only lasts a few seconds before the phone starts buzzing again.
Yesterday, people wanted answers because reporters were standing outside my building. Today, they’re calling because those reporters have already decided what the answers are.
"You don't have to answer them yet," Declan says.
I let out a tired laugh that doesn't sound much like one. "Rebecca's going to be fielding calls before the office even opens. Every reporter who can't get through to Crossridge is going to start calling us instead."
"They'll assume you're dealing with a crisis."
"They're the same thing this morning."
He doesn't argue.
For a long moment, neither of us says anything.
He watches me while I stare at the growing list of missed calls, and I hate how quickly the room has changed.
Less than five minutes ago, I woke up believing we’d finally found something worth holding onto.
Now it already feels like the outside world has reached inside these four walls, reminding us that nothing belongs only to us for very long.
Declan reaches for his own phone. The screen is no better than mine. Marcus. Graham. Sloane. Carl. More messages arrive before he’s finished reading the first notification. He exhales slowly, locks the screen without opening any of them, and sets the phone on the nightstand.
"I need to find out who knew where we were."
The words are quiet, almost absentminded, as though he hadn't realized he'd spoken them aloud.
I lower my eyes.
Of course he does. It’s exactly where his mind would go.
Someone tipped off the press. Someone made sure those photographs ended up in the right hands before we were even out of the alleyway.
It makes sense that Declan wants to know who did it.
He wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
None of that is wrong. It bothers me more than I expect.
"You already switched back," I say softly.
His head turns toward me. "Switched back?"
"To work."
A faint line appears between his brows. "Talia..."
“I’m not saying you don’t care.” I shake my head before he can misunderstand me. “I know why you’re thinking about it. I know Flynn is part of this. I know you’re trying to protect us.”
I draw a slow breath, searching for words that don’t sound like an accusation. “It’s just… last night it felt like there were only three people in the world. This morning it feels like Crossridge is back in the room.”
For the first time since I woke up, he doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he reaches for my hand, his fingers closing around mine with the same quiet certainty they had last night.
Neither of us moves any closer. The silence stretches between us, and I find myself watching our hands instead of the phone, trying to believe this matters more than everything waiting on the other side of that screen.
"I wish it wasn't," he says.
I believe he means it. That's the problem. I believe him, and I still can't stop looking at the headlines.
My phone vibrates again, breaking the silence between us. I glance at the screen, then turn it facedown against the blankets before I can read it. I don’t need to. Another headline. Another request for comment. Another version of the same story already out of our hands.
My fingers tighten slightly before I force them to relax.
His phone begins vibrating again, the sound cutting through the room before either of us says another word. He glances toward the nightstand but doesn't reach for it.
"It can wait," he says.
Another vibration follows almost immediately, then another. I don't have to see the screen to guess who's calling. Marcus. Graham. Sloane. The people already trying to contain the same story that's spreading faster than any of us can keep up with.
"It doesn't sound like it can," I say.
"I'm here."
"I know."
"You don't sound like you believe me."
I lower my eyes, tracing the edge of the blanket with my thumb while I search for words that don't feel unfair.
"I believe that's where you want to be."
His brow furrows slightly.
"But?"
I shake my head.
"There doesn't have to be a but."
"Talia."
"There doesn't."
I finally look back at him.
"I know exactly who you are, Declan. I know how you're wired. If someone leaked my home, you're going to want to find out who did it. If those pictures put Flynn at risk, you're going to do everything you can to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Yes."
"I know."
"And you think that's wrong?"
"No."
The answer comes so quickly that neither of us questions it.
"I think it's exactly who you are."
He studies me for another moment before speaking again. "Then what changed?"
I wish I had an answer that made sense. Or that I could explain why everything felt so certain in the middle of the night and so fragile in the light of morning. Instead, I glance toward the phone still resting in my hand.
"The world remembered where to find us."