Aubrey
Istare at Linden's phone on the kitchen island where he dropped it face-down when we came in and think that leaving the room would be easier. I could take my taped palm, my split lip, and my stupid ankle upstairs to my suite. I could shut the door and let this turn into silence.
Yes. So very mature.
The phone's useful as a paperweight to me and not much else. Mine's in Dora's tote. The panic phone, too. What I have instead is a list. Unknown messages held. Personal phone isolated. No unscheduled movement.
Cool.
Love that.
Hollis is gone. Dismissed by his boss to watch the outer vestibule. Across the kitchen, that boss, Linden, stands near the sink, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He hasn't touched me since dealing with my palm.
That should help.
It doesn't.
"You're still here," he says.
"I'm debating the emotional benefits of throwing your very secure phone into your very expensive sink," I reply. "You know. Payback."
His mouth moves, barely. It doesn't become a smile.
I tap the phone screen. My palm pulls under the tape and stings. "You know the worst part wasn't the shove, right?"
His attention drops to my hand, then my mouth, then back to my face. He looks like he wants to ask who shoved me. Who leaked the route.
I save him the trip.
"I don't know who it was." I lift my taped hand. "But outside Channel Seven, for five minutes, I stopped being a person. People could grab me. Yell at me. Move me around for a better angle."
His hands close around the edge of the counter behind him.
I keep going because if I stop, I'll do the retreat to the suite thing.
"And then I get here, and you take my devices, restrict my movement, hold my messages, and decide who gets access to me. So now the man who is technically my husband is also the man deciding the terms of my life. Congratulations."
"Aubrey," he tries.
"No," I reply. "Don't use that voice."
His eyes close. When he opens them, I realize they're bloodshot.
"It's my fault," he says. "I won't dress it up. My money made you more visible. My name made the room point at you. My family's fucking machinery helped turn you into an object strangers felt entitled to reach for."
My throat tightens. Annoying.
No polished answer about active threat environments and proportional response. Just him standing in the kitchen saying the thing I wanted him to say and somehow making me more furious.
Because if he knows it's his fault, then why did he do it?
"You know we have thirteen days left before the public window closes and I can leave," I say.
He nods gravely. "I know." Then he pauses. "If all of this is fake, why are you angry I'm acting like a controlling husband?"
My head comes up. "Excuse me?"
"If it's only paper, then I'm an overreaching contractor. If this is nothing but the agreement, why does it hurt like this?"
I have to laugh at that. "You're standing there asking why it feels real when you're the one who keeps making real decisions without asking me."
"And you keep calling it fake when you want the safety of distance," he says. "You call it fake when you need to leave yourself an exit."
"Yes, genius," I counter. "Because exits are what keep it from being a cage."
His face changes at that. Not much.
I jab a finger toward his phone. "You can't say you want me free and then confiscate the ways I talk to the world."
"I know."
"Do you?" My voice climbs. "Because every time someone touches me, you look like you want to erase them from the earth."
He answers too fast. "I do."
The worst part is, I like it.
I point at him. "Acting like you own the right to retaliate on my behalf is not the same thing as caring about me."
His shoulders go still.
"If someone hurts me," I continue, "you don't get to turn into the final boss and call that devotion. You don't get to take over without considering what I want."
"I know," he repeats.
I cross my arms. "Stop effing saying you know."
"I don't have a better answer," he replies.
"Try," I implore.
He looks at the phone again, then the ring, then down at his hands. Nothing to occupy them.
"In my mother's house, we learned early," he says. "If you were tired, someone used it. If you wanted something, someone priced it. If you loved someone, that became leverage at dinner, in a boardroom, in a trust document. Control was the only way to keep fear from becoming public."
I don't move.
He doesn't look proud of this. He looks sick.
"So when I'm scared," he says, "I don't ask. I contain. I call it safety because that sounds less ugly than control."
My anger stays. The new information doesn't make it smaller.
"I understand how you got there," I say. "But I'm not forgiving what you did."
"I'm not asking you to," he counters. Then he pauses. "I'm asking what you need changed before sunrise."
I laugh, suddenly relieved. "That's it then? You're considering my needs for once?"
"I'm considering your needs," he repeats.
I rub the heel of my good hand against my forehead.
"Well in that case. I need my personal phone back when the imaging is done.
I need unknown messages reviewed for threats, but not held just because they annoy you.
I need to be told what's restricted and why.
I need an appeal that isn't just your mood in a suit. "
He shifts his weight, but stops himself from coming closer. "Your personal phone comes back when imaging is done. If there's a reason to hold it longer, you hear the reason before I make another move. Hollis can brief both of us in the morning."
"And my movements?" I press.
He nods. "Movement restrictions get reviewed every twelve hours. You can challenge any of them through counsel or directly to me, and I don't get to punish you for it."
My taped palm pulses. "And Lantern House?"
"Planned route only until we know the leak source. Dora stays with you as usual, plus the second agent."
I can live with a route if I know the reason and I can challenge it. I can't live with him turning the shelter into another place where his fear outranks everyone else.
"No resident data," I say.
"No resident data," he agrees.
"You don't ask Marnie for camera pulls unless she initiates it with Lantern House counsel," I say. My boss and Lantern House counsel get to decide where Lantern House draws that line, not Linden's fear and not his security team. "You don't make me a reason residents lose privacy."
"I won't." The answer is fast.
I think of the coming Commission. Linden's name on one side of my testimony and the women from Lantern House on the other. If I ever speak in a way that helps him, it can't be because I polish this into a better story. It has to be the truth. He built dangerous systems.
My stomach knots.
He sees my face. "What?"
"If I testify at the Commission," I say slowly, "I won't lie."
"I don't want you to."
"No, I mean I won't sand it down. I won't turn you into a changed man in a nicer suit. I'll say what's true or I won't say anything."
His eyes hold mine. "Then say what's true."
"That might hurt you," I tell him.
"It should, if it's true," he replies.
I hate him a little for being good at the exact wrong second.
I sit, then stand because my ankle aches, then sit again because standing is stupid. Linden stays on the other side of the island until I tell him he can use the chair. He does. He doesn't move it closer.
"I don't want to go upstairs angry," I say.
"Tell me what to do," he replies. "Tell me what you need."
"Just... stay close." My voice is smaller than I want.
He rises carefully, giving me time to tell him no. When I don't, he comes around the island and stops beside me, close enough that I can feel his heat, not touching until I reach first. I hook two fingers in his rolled cuff.