She does. She holds my gaze like a dare and like a vow, and when I finally let the rhythm we’ve been building crest, her fingers clutch at my shoulders and she comes apart with her eyes open.
Yes, I think, fierce and clean. No running. No dark.
Just this.
I talk her down. I keep my mouth on her hairline and the bridge of her nose and the point of her chin, the way you soothe a shaking hand by holding it. When she can breathe without chasing it, I loosen the harness one rung at the center cinch so the pressure eases but the pattern remains. She sighs, a sound that feels like sleep would feel if we let it.
“Water,” I say. She nods. I bring it, holding the glass while she drinks because she’s boneless and nerveless still.
She swallows and licks a drop from her lip, slow. “You’re looking at me like you still want something.”
“I do,” I answer. “I want to give you everything I didn’t have the language for when I was busy pretending I was only a brain.”
“What’s the language now?”
I take a breath. It isn’t a speech; it’s a line of code that runs or it doesn’t. “You own me.”
She blinks, startled. Then the edges of her mouth soften into something I’ve wanted to earn since the first time she called me by my first name like it mattered. “Say it again.”
“You own me,” I repeat, steady, not a performance. “Not the hotel. Not the cameras. Not the legacy my parents think they own. Me. I will build you a world where you never have to doubt that.”
Her throat works. Her hand finds my jaw and holds it. “I don’t want your apology for wanting to hold the whole house together,” she says. “I want your promise you’ll let me help.”
“It’s yours,” I say. “I’m yours.”
She kisses me like she’s sealing a contract and a prayer at the same time. When she pulls back, her eyes flick to the coils of silk still on the bed. She smiles, slow, satisfied.
“Again?” she asks.
“Different pattern,” I say, already reaching for the rope, my pulse settling into a new, clean cadence that feels like a life I can stand to live. “Hands front, this time. I want your nails on my back when you take your turn.”
Her answering laugh is low and delighted. “Green,” she says, and lifts her wrists to me.
24
Phoenix
Somethingthwacksagainst the glass of the shower enclosure hard enough to rattle the door on its track. A rectangle of paper blooms against the fog on the other side, the face I dragged out of my head staring at me through steam.
Atticus is a silhouette on the other side—broad shoulders, jaw clenched. “Is this the man who killed Danner? The man on the container ship?”
I squint, soap burning my eyes. Water drums my scalp. I blink through the sting and nod, once, sharp. “Yes.”
He swears under his breath, a low string of words that tastes like metal even through the glass. Then he’s gone. No softening. No explanation. Just the click of the door and his footsteps, fast and hard.
I scrub soap from my lashes with my knuckles, yank the handle, and rinse until my eyes stop feeling flayed. The house is not quiet. It has thatgatheringsound—boots on wood, voices tightened down to spare parts. I kill the water, grab a towel, andwrap it around me in a tight twist that buys me thirty seconds of dignity and exactly zero patience.
“Atticus!” I shout, already moving. “What the?—”
I don’t finish, because I hit the den doorway and walk straight into a firing squad of attention. The security team is posted in a half-moon around the long table, comms in ears, their posture a single word—go.Atticus stands at the head with the sketch in his hand like a warrant. Storm is two paces off his shoulder, expression flat and lethal. Maverick is pacing, phone to his ear, palm pressed to his chest like he’s trying to pretend his heart isn’t climbing into it. Conrad is near the far corner—then he sees me.
Everything in him tightens, then snaps. He pulls his gun and levels it at the wall above the team with the kind of control that makes men rethink their lives. “Close your eyes and turn around,” he says to them, even. They move instantly to obey. Then to me, voice rough and struggling for control, “Phoenix. Clothes. Now.”
“Excuse me,” I say, because the towel is not the problem, and everybody knows it. “What the fuck is going on?”
Atticus flicks his gaze to me and away like he can’t afford the gravitational pull. “We have an ID.”
“You had an ID last night. You have my sketch. That’s not what’s happening.”
