Chapter 25 - Marisol #2
The champagne in the fridge whispers to me once. Old habit, old solution, old friend. But that would be inefficient, and I'm all about efficiency now. Besides, Nico would notice, and I can't bear the thought of his concern. The careful way he'd ask if I'm "coping."
I handle two calls smoothly. First the lawyer again, then a financial advisor. Every word measured, every response calculated. No emotion bleeding through. This is what Nico does. This is how he survives. Assess the threat, develop response, execute.
He opens his mouth twice during my calls, then closes it. Something building behind his eyes that he won't voice. His fingers drum once against his thigh. The only sign of agitation I've seen from him all day.
"Marisol."
"Hmm?" I don't look up from the financial records I'm analyzing.
"Talk to me."
"I am talking. The records show a pattern of systematic transfers that…"
"That's not what I mean."
I look up. Meet his hazel eyes. Give him nothing but empty efficiency. My face a mask of professional competence.
"I'm fine. I'm handling it."
Something flickers behind his eyes. Not anger. Recognition. And underneath that, fear. Real fear, the kind I've never seen from him before.
Evening falls, painting the penthouse in gold and shadow. He comes to sit beside me on the couch. Close. His body angled toward mine, knee almost touching my thigh. The heat of him raises goosebumps on my arms, but I don't shift away. Don't shift closer. Just continue working.
"You need to stop."
"I need to prepare for tomorrow."
"You've been at this for ten hours."
"There's a lot to prepare for."
"Marisol." His hand covers mine on the keyboard, stilling my fingers. "Look at me."
I look. Calm. Empty. Patient. Waiting for him to say whatever he needs to say so I can get back to work.
"You're shutting down."
"I'm strategizing." I pull my hand back, place it precisely on my lap. "Isn't that what you do? Assess threats, compartmentalize emotion, maintain operational efficiency? This tactical approach. You taught me how."
Something happens to his face. A micro-shift that transforms him completely. The fear intensifies, mixed with something that looks almost like grief.
"I've been relying on you too much," I continue, my voice reasonable, measured. "For protection, for emotional support, for everything. That's not fair to you, and it's not sustainable. I need to handle this myself."
I mean it as maturity. As strength. As finally becoming someone who doesn't need constant saving.
His hand drops from where it was reaching for me. Falls to his side like something severed.
The air changes between us. A temperature shift so sudden it's almost physical. Like someone opened every window in January. The warmth drains from his eyes. The openness, the tenderness, the careful way he's held me for days, all of it retreats behind something hard and impenetrable.
The soldier from Day 1 is back. The one who looked at me like an asset to manage.
"Nico?"
"You should get some rest." His voice is even. Professional. The voice he uses for phone calls about operations, not the voice that groaned my name last night.
"What did I say?"
"Nothing. You're right. You should handle this yourself." He stands, and the distance feels infinite even though he's three feet away. "I'll be in the other room if you need security assistance."
Security assistance. The words land like ice.
He moves toward the guest room. The narrow bed he hasn't touched in weeks, the space he abandoned to curl around me at night, to wake me with his tongue between my legs, to hold me through nightmares.
"Nico." The tremor in my voice betrays everything I'm trying not to feel. "Did I do something wrong?"
A long silence. His back to me. I see the tension in his shoulders. Coiled, rigid, a man at war with himself. His hand grips the doorframe hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
"No, ma’am." The words comes out quiet, final. "You didn't do anything wrong."
He closes the door.
The sound echoes through the penthouse. I stare at the closed door.
At the silence on the other side. My chest feels hollow, scraped clean.
I gave him everything. Every secret, every wound, every shameful truth I've never told another soul.
Trusted him completely. Last night he was inside me, saying my name like a prayer. Tonight he can't even look at me.
What did I say wrong? I replay every word, searching for the fault line. I was being strong. Competent. Strategic. Self-sufficient. Everything I should be. Everything he is.
"You taught me how." His face changing.
"I don't need you to protect me." His hand dropping.
"I can handle it." The temperature plunging.
Why did my strength scare him? Why did becoming like him drive him away?
The old narrative surfaces, familiar as breathing. Poisonous. Reliable.
Everyone leaves.
Gabriel left for God and guilt. My mother left through death.
My father retreated behind disappointment.
Gunner retreated to be Nico’s best fucking friend.
Logan retreated behind doubt. And now Nico, who held me through nightmares, who threw a man into rocks for touching my arm, who came inside me while looking into my eyes, is behind a closed door.
I'm the common denominator. The thing people eventually can't stay near. The disaster they grow tired of managing. Or maybe, and this thought cuts deepest, the emptiness they see when I stop performing.
I don't understand what I triggered in him. Don't understand why my competence became a weapon turned back on us both. All I know is that I'm sitting here in the gathering dark, confused and alone, while the only person I had left has withdrawn completely.
Three AM. The penthouse is dark except for city lights bleeding through windows.
Miami still pulses below. Neon promises, bass from distant clubs, the city that never sleeps even when everything in it is dying.
The humidity presses against the glass, and I can taste salt air, but there's no cinnamon anymore.
No gun oil. Just the expensive nothing of an empty space.
My hand raises toward his door. Three times I almost knock. Three times I pull back. What would I say? I'm sorry for becoming strong? Please want me even though I'm empty now? Come back and be the man who made me believe I was worth staying for?
The words would die in my throat anyway. The chaos goblin who would have made a joke, who would have called him Tactical Banana and demanded he stop being ridiculous, she's extinct. What's left doesn't know how to bridge this distance.
I haven't moved from the couch in hours. Can't sleep. Can't cry. Can't feel anything except this spreading numbness, ice forming over everything that used to burn.
On one side of that wall, the man who made me believe I was worth staying for. Who showed me what it felt like to be wanted, claimed, kept. On the other side, me. Apparently proving I wasn't worth it after all.
I don't cry. That would require feeling something, and I turned that off hours ago.
The numbness is complete now, spreading through me like winter.
Everything that made me myself, the chaos, the warmth, the woman who grabbed his cock on a boat just to see him lose control, all of it extinct. Frozen. Gone.
The laptop sits closed on the coffee table. All those lists, all that strategy. What's the point? I did everything right. Became strong, tactical, self-sufficient. Became what he is. And it drove him away.
Maybe that's my real talent. Not the chaos goblin act, not the party girl performance.
My real talent is becoming exactly what people don't want.
My brother needed innocence; I gave him complicity.
My father needed strength; I gave him weakness.
Nico needed… what? The mess? The vulnerability? The woman who needed saving?
I'll never know now. He's gone. Not physically, but in every way that matters.
I pull my knees to my chest, making myself smaller on the vast couch. The silk of my dress is cold against my skin. Everything is cold now. Even the memory of his heat inside me feels distant, like something I dreamed or saw in a movie about other people.
The silence stretches on. Empty. Final. Complete.