Chapter 6-Close Quarters #2
"The registration traces to a holding company," Richard continued. "Takes it one step further back, but the trail is there. Declan's still working on it."
I set down my pen. "You've known about this."
"I've been working on it."
"That's not what I asked."
He held my gaze. "I've known about the sedan for weeks. Declan traced it to a holding company just before I came to your office."
I looked back at my computer.
Didn't say anything.
The Morrison contracts blurred slightly at the edges.
I forced myself to focus. To breathe. To stay in the chair instead of doing what every instinct was telling me to do—stand up, pace, demand every detail he'd been sitting on while I'd been going about my carefully ordered life, thinking the worst of it was sickeningly sweet lilies and an open drawer.
"How long before you have a name?" I said finally.
He looked up from his laptop. Held my gaze for a beat.
"Before we have a name," he said.
Something shifted in his expression—not quite a smile, but close.
I set my pen down. He was looking at me. Steady. Patient. The way no one had ever looked at me before—like whatever I said next, he could handle it.
"How long," I said, "before we have a name?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “A day or two."
We took separate cars back. Same as the morning, same as it would be every day, apparently.
I arrived first. Got inside, closed the door. I was halfway through shrugging off my coat when it opened again behind me.
I turned on reflex—and he was suddenly there. Close enough that I backed into the wall before I realized I'd moved. His hand closed around my wrist instinctively, steadying me, and neither of us let go.
Just inches between us.
His fingers were warm against my skin.
I felt his breath.
I felt my pulse jump beneath the thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist.
"I've been taking my own coat off for years," I said.
"I know." He didn't let go. The sleeve came free, slowly, and he set the coat over the back of the chair by the door, which was where I kept it, which he'd learned in thirty-six hours. "Dinner."
"I'm not hungry."
"Blaire."
"I had the protein bar."
"That was seven hours ago."
He moved past me toward the kitchen, and I stood there longer than I should have, watching him open the refrigerator.
I was running out of reasons to pretend that watching him didn't mean something.
Control, I told myself. Control. Always control.
I hung up my bag and followed him into the kitchen.
We ate at the kitchen island because the dining table felt too formal—his word, offered lightly, without expectation or pressure—and he made pasta out of whatever happened to be in my refrigerator.
I'd known he could cook.
I just hadn't realized something that simple could feel so intimate.
He passed the Parmesan.
"You've been quiet tonight," he said.
I looked at my plate. "Someone has been in my office. Maybe my apartment too."
"I know." He waited until I looked up.
I set my fork down.
"You said the trail was there," I said. "On the sedan."
He accepted the redirect. He always did. "Yeah. A day or two."
He gave me that. The mercy of not looking too closely. The quiet agreement to pretend we were just two people eating dinner in a kitchen that belonged to neither history nor consequences.
I didn't know what to do with that kind of tenderness.
I didn't know if I was more afraid of it—or of how badly I was beginning to need it.
At the door, I automatically checked the locks. Bolt. Chain. Deadbolt. The same sequence I always used. Quick. Practiced. Not thinking about it.
From the bedroom, the low sound of him moving around. The weight of his footsteps, which I'd learned the way you learn the sounds of a building you've lived in long enough—not consciously, just the way the body picks up on things it's decided it needs.
I took my hand off the door.
Went to bed.
His breathing in the dark is deep and rhythmic.
Already asleep or close to it, and I lay there on my side of the bed staring at the ceiling, thirty seconds and a foot of mattress away from the one person who had ever looked at me—the real me, the raw version, the woman who burned the toast and checked the lock and didn't know how to want something she couldn't schedule or control—and hadn't looked away.
Wanting him was the problem.
The wanting had always been the problem.
Because fear was familiar.
Fear had rules.
You could build your life around it. Check the locks. Keep people at arm's length. Stay busy. Stay careful. Stay in control.
Fear asked for sacrifices, but at least it told you what they were.
This was different.
This was wanting something that could leave.
Wanting someone whose opinion mattered enough to hurt you.
Someone who saw every ugly, guarded, frightened piece of you—and stayed anyway.
That was the part I didn't know how to survive.
Because if Richard walked away now, there would be no one left to blame but me.
I turned toward the wall. Away from the steady sound of his breathing.
Away from the temptation of reaching for him.
I pulled the blanket to my chin and squeezed my eyes shut.
Told myself it was proximity. Familiarity. History.
Told myself it was only because he was here.
That tomorrow I'd wake up and find the distance again.
That everything would go back to the way it was before.
The lie sat heavy in my chest.
Because deep down, I already knew it wouldn't.