30. Mia
MIA
The journals sat open on the library desk and I stared at Ludo's handwriting without reading a single word.
Three hours. Tony had been behind the study door for three hours.
I could hear the low vibration of his voice through the walls. The rhythm of someone giving orders. Not yelling. Never yelling.
That was worse. The Tony who yelled was the Tony you could reach. This Tony was somewhere I couldn't follow.
Sophia arrived at seven to start breakfast. She took one look at my face, set a mug of coffee in front of me, and said nothing.
Sophia always knew. She read rooms the way Tony read light.
Avery came down in her pajamas with her stuffed elephant dragging behind her. She climbed onto the chair beside me and pressed her nose to the table, studying me with those enormous green eyes.
"Are you and Daddy fighting?"
My chest caved. "No, sweetheart."
"You look sad."
"I'm just tired." I tucked a dark curl behind her ear. "Did you sleep okay?"
She nodded. Then she leaned her head on my arm and stayed there. Five years old and she already understood that sometimes people needed company more than answers.
Tony appeared at eight. Clean shirt. Jaw set. Eyes that looked through me like glass.
"Morning." He poured his coffee. Black. No sugar.
Didn't sit down.
"Morning."
He passed the counter where I sat and the air between us carried turpentine and soap. No pause. No brush of his fingers over mine.
He moved through the kitchen like I was furniture.
That was it. The entire conversation.
He took his mug to the studio and closed the door. The click of the latch was the loudest sound in the house.
Avery watched him go. Then she looked at me. "Daddy didn't eat his pancakes."
"He's busy, sweetheart."
"He's always busy." She stabbed her fork into a blueberry. "But he always eats pancakes."
Sophia set a plate of toast in front of me. I picked up a piece. Put it down.
Picked it up again. Took a bite. Chewed. Couldn't taste a thing.
I worked through the day because I didn't know what else to do. Ludo's journals. The translation notes.
The careful, methodical work of turning a dead man's words into something the living could understand. My hands were steady. My eyes were dry.
I was holding myself together with the kind of discipline that costs you later.
Through the glass walls I could see the studio. Tony stood at a canvas with his back to me. His shoulders were rigid.
His brush moved in short, aggressive strokes. He was painting the way some people punch walls.
Avery brought me a drawing at lunch. A house with too many windows, a stick figure with brown hair, and a stick figure with wild dark scribbles on its head.
"That's you and Daddy." She pointed. "See? You're holding hands."
"Beautiful." My voice cracked on the word.
Sophia collected Avery for her afternoon nap. On her way past the library door, she paused. "He's still in the studio."
I nodded.
"He came back last night. After you went to the cottage." Her voice was low.
"When I got here this morning, the study light was still on. Coffee mugs on the desk. And there are wet canvases in the studio."
I looked up.
"I have known that man since he was twenty years old." Sophia smoothed her hands down her apron. "He doesn't leave. Not the people who matter."
She walked away before I could respond. The kitchen still smelled like pancakes and coffee.
Avery's drawing sat on the table. The two stick figures with their outsized hands connected by a crayon line. I folded it and put it in my pocket.
The afternoon dragged. I translated three pages of Ludo's journals and couldn't remember a word of what I'd written.
Tony never came out of the studio. Through the glass between the library and his workspace, I could see his back, his arm moving, the canvases lined up along the far wall.
He was in there with his paint and his fury. I was out here with my guilt and my fear. And a drawing in my pocket made by a child who thought love was that simple.
The cottage was cold when I got back.
I stood in the bedroom and looked at my life. Two suitcases in the closet. A box of books on the shelf Tony built.
The lamp with the crooked shade. Cory's photograph hidden inside the nightstand drawer.
Everything I owned in the world fit into two bags and a box.
I pulled the suitcases out. Set them on the bed. Opened them.
The motions were automatic. Shirts folded into squares. Jeans rolled tight.
Toiletries in the zippered pouch. I'd done this before. I was good at this. The kind of woman who could dismantle a life in under an hour.
Hadley Winslow had disappeared once and Mia Hayes could disappear again. New name. New town. New hair.
A different cottage in a different state where a different man's daughter would not call me Mimi and break my heart every single morning.
The books went in first. Spine up, tight rows, the way a librarian would.
Next the lamp. Cord wrapped around its base. I left Cory's photograph for last because I always left him for last.
The edge of the bed dipped when I sat down with his picture in my hands. His face. That grin.
The stupid Red Sox cap he wore backward. The way he used to say "Come here" with his arms already open.
Cory would have told me to run. Cory would have told me to protect myself.
He was practical like that. Safe like that. He would have said the smart thing and the right thing and the thing that kept me alive.
But Cory was gone. The life I wanted was fifty yards through the trees. A glass house. A man who wouldn't look at me. A little girl who drew us holding hands.
The photograph landed face-down on the bed.
The lamp went back on the nightstand first. Then the books. Then the shirts and jeans and toiletries.
Every single item returned to its place. Slower this time. Not packing. Choosing.
The suitcases went into the closet. Cory's photograph went into the drawer.
The porch was cold. The light faded behind the mountains. The air smelled like pine and cold earth and the last gasp of winter holding on past its welcome.
Not running. Not this time. Not from this.
If Tony wanted me to leave, he could say the words to my face. And even then, I'd probably argue.
I left the front door unlocked when I went inside.
The knock came after midnight.
I hadn't been sleeping. I'd been lying on top of the covers in the dark, still dressed, staring at the ceiling.
The wind had picked up around ten and the pines were moving outside the window. Branches scraping. Shadows shifting.
The knock was soft. Two taps. The kind a person makes when they're not sure they should be there.
I crossed the cottage in bare feet. The floorboards bit into my soles. My hand found the doorknob and I turned it.
Tony stood on the porch in a white t-shirt and sweatpants. Barefoot on the stone step. No jacket.
The April cold had turned his breath to vapor and the moonlight caught the hollows under his eyes. His hair was wild.
He didn't speak.
I stepped back. He stepped in. The door closed behind him.
And then his arms were around me. I was pressed against his chest and the top of my head barely reached his collarbone.
He was so much bigger than me. But his body was shaking.
The man who'd spent the day in ice-cold command was trembling against me. All that control, gone.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on.
We stood in the dark cottage. No words. The sound of his breathing. The sound of mine.
His hand moved to the back of my head. He pulled me closer, tucking me under his chin. I let myself disappear into the space he made.
His heartbeat was fast. Faster than mine. He'd walked across fifty yards of frozen grass in bare feet to knock on my door at midnight. His heart was racing.
I don't know how long we stood there. Long enough for the wind to die down outside. Long enough for his shaking to stop.
Long enough for my grip on his shirt to loosen from a fist to a palm pressed flat against his back.
He drew back just enough to find my face. His thumb traced the line of my jaw.
Gentle. So careful. Like he was handling something he'd broken once and couldn't afford to break again.
"I saw the suitcases by the door when I came in."
"I put everything back."
"I know."
A pause. His thumb still on my jaw.
"Don't leave."
Words stacked up behind my teeth. "I'm not going anywhere."
He kissed me. It tasted like salt and coffee and desperation. I pulled him toward the bedroom because we had run out of words hours ago.
His hands stayed cold from the walk across the meadow. The chill pressed through my shirt until his fingers slipped under the hem. Rough palms slid up my bare skin and warmed fast.
I yanked his t-shirt up and over his head. He ducked to help, and I put my mouth on the center of his chest. His heart pounded hard against my lips.
Dried paint streaked his forearms in blue and gray. The flakes crumbled under my grip as I held his arms. He had spent the whole day in the studio and brought the evidence straight to me.
He laid me down on the bed, careful at first. I pulled him down hard because careful was not what I needed tonight.
His full weight settled over me. I sank into the mattress and locked my legs around his hips so he could not pull away. He braced on his forearms and kept just enough space so he would not crush me.
His mouth moved to my neck, then my collarbone, then the soft spot at the base of my throat where my pulse raced. I pressed my breasts tighter against his chest.
His hand traced down my side, over my ribs and the curve of my waist to my hip. When his fingers reached the small of my back, they paused on the raised scar. He knew what the bullet had done now.
I covered his hand with mine and pressed his palm flat against the scar tissue. He exhaled, shaky and long. His forehead dropped to my shoulder and his breath warmed my neck. I pushed my fingers into his curls. More paint flakes scattered across the pillow.
When he lifted his head, his green eyes looked wet and raw. Every wall had fallen away.
I kissed him again. Our mouths opened and the kiss turned slower, heavier. Clothes came off between touches until nothing stood between us.
He pushed inside me in one steady motion, thick and hot, stretching me until he filled me completely.
We rocked together without hurry. Each thrust dragged pleasure through me and ground against my clit.
My nails scraped lightly down his back while the dried paint transferred to my skin in faint streaks.
His hand returned to my lower back and spread over the scar, holding me closer as he moved deeper. Our foreheads pressed together. We kept our eyes open the entire time, locked on each other with nothing left to hide.
The tension coiled tighter until it broke. My body clenched around his cock in strong pulses as pleasure surged through me. He followed right after, body rigid, spilling hot inside me with deep throbs.
He rolled to his side and pulled me back against his chest, spooning me tight. His arm locked around my waist and his damp chest pressed to my back. His softening cock nestled warm against me.
We stayed quiet. The cottage settled and the wind pushed against the windows again. The sheets carried the mixed scent of our skin and the faint trace of dried paint.
His breathing slowed. His grip eased but never released me.
I woke to gray light through the curtains with his arm still heavy across my waist.
His face was buried in my hair. His breathing was slow and even. I stayed still because I wanted this moment to last.
The room was quiet. The mountains were visible through the back window. Snow on the peaks. Dark pines below.
The sky turning from gray to pale gold. A bird landed on the porch railing outside and tilted its head at the window.
I could feel the bruises on my hip where he'd held me too tight. I didn't care. Those marks meant last night was real and not a dream I'd invented to survive the morning.
I thought he was asleep.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you." A whisper. Meant for the dark. Meant for no one.
His arm tightened around my waist.
Awake.
A long silence. Long enough for my pulse to climb. Long enough to count every heartbeat.
"I don't care who you were."
Another pause. The kind that stretches until the air gets thin.
"But you should have told me."
I nodded into the hollow of his shoulder. "I know."
His fingers brushed across my cheekbone.
The same tenderness from a hundred quiet moments. Bruised now. Still there.
He gathered me closer and I drew my knees up and curled into the bend of his body. Small against the breadth of him. Held.
"I unpacked."
His chest moved. A sound that was almost a laugh. "Yeah. I noticed."
Outside, the first birds started calling through the pines. The gold light spread across the floor.
The cottage held us. The mountains held the cottage. And Tony's arms held me like a man who'd decided something during the longest night of his life and wasn't going to change his mind.
I closed my eyes. And for the first time in a year, I stayed.