She nods. “I told Simone you’d be hungry at exactly this minute. She said if she feeds you anything but soup afterthat roomshe’ll have to answer for it to someone you don’t want to meet.”
I don’t ask who. I don’t want new characters in my head right now. I step into my room and shut the door with a care that makes the latch click like a promise. The air smells like linen andcedar again, the studio’s paint already a ghost on my clothes. The easel is still by the window where the light will be right in the morning. I don’t want morning. I want a night that tells the truth and leaves me alone.
The brush is still in my hand. I look at it like it belongs to someone else. Paint has dried along the ferrule, a ridgeline of white and umber and black that records the moment I saidthresholdwithout using the word.
I go to the sink and turn the water on. It runs cold for a beat and then remembers how to be warm. I wet a cloth and wipe my forearm where his fingers traced paint like a line only he could see. The mark comes away in streaks, then in nothing, leaving a faint warmth that was mine before it was his. I wash again because ritual makes your brain think it’s in charge. The second pass doesn’t change anything. He’s not on my skin, but my skin still knows him.
I look at my palm. Paint smears across the pads in a pattern I know without thinking: ultramarine thinned with white, umber dragged, black dabbed with the corner of a rag. It smells like cedar and rain and him. It’s evidence. That’s what I tell myself. It’s an object I can hold up later and say,you see, this happened in that room, and no one touched me without my permission, and I still feel like I left with something I didn’t want to carry.My body knows it’s not evidence. It’s a promise I made to myself when I didn’t pull away.
I press my palm to the paper on the desk, the nice stationery I mocked earlier, and leave a print.
When I lie back, I don’t pull the covers up. I stare at the ceiling until the room’s shapes decide what they want to be. My mouth still remembers the way breath changes when a person stands close with intention. I hate him. I want him. I want the Sanctuaries to be exactly what he says they are and I want to break his rules until I find the part where the truth hurts.
I lift my hand and bring it to my face. The paint smell has faded under soap and the room and the night. What’s left is skin. Mine. I press my palm to my mouth and pretend it’s a test I’m going to pass tomorrow.
“Get the answers,” I whisper to the dark. “Keep your distance.”
My body hums like it didn’t hear me. It will have to learn.
I close my eyes and let sleep circle the room without entering. When it finally does, it brings a studio with it and a light that turns on above a table no one could call safe.
Chapter 24 – Cassian
Cold water first. It has to be cold, or the rest of the day makes decisions for me.
I stand under the spray until my skin stops arguing and my breath evens out. Ten slow inhales, eight slower exhales, a number set I stole from an ER nurse who could bring down a panic attack with a hand on the sternum and a voice like a metronome. I count it through twice because the first run is always theater and the second is the only one your body believes. My mouth still remembers last night, but memory is not agenda. I turn the handle harder, let the water bite a little, and make myself think in columns: budgets, staffing, intake numbers, the senator’s office, a donor who wants his name on a plaque that will never exist.
By the time I kill the water and reach for the towel, the checklist has replaced the image of her hand around a brush and the sound she made when the line went right. I run a hand over my jaw to confirm a shave I don’t need but take anyway. In the mirror my face reads as composed, which is the only reading my people should get this morning. The pulse in my neck tells the truth. I button the last button and ignore it.
The lower levels of the Residency House are the part I show almost no one. Even staff come here by invitation. The corridor from the private elevator gives you a choice: right into the control wing, left into the clinic and assessment rooms, straight across to the secure teleconferencing suite. The window sets high near the ceiling catch slats of pale morning like a courtesy, not a promise. Most light down here is deliberate. Screens provide context. Lamps take the glare off decisions.
Mara is already in the glass-walled conference room, a tablet open, a legal pad beside it with three bullets she will want me to pretend are optional. Reid stands at the far end, armscrossed, posture that reads as relaxed if you don’t know what it looks like when he’s actually relaxed.
“Good morning,” Mara says, without the upward lilt people use when they don’t mean it. “We have ten minutes before Navarro joins. I want to hit donors and the senator’s staff before we hand the line over to triage.”
“Do it,” I command. I take the head of the table.
Mara taps the tablet and the wall display picks up her deck. “First,” she says, “the Whitcomb family office. They’re increasing this quarter’s donation by fifteen percent, but they want to reword the acknowledgment letter to include the phraseinnovative medical care.Legal doesn’t love it. I can make itinnovative careand keep us inside what we tell the IRS without inviting a clinic audit.”
“Change it.” I tap the table. “Nomedical.We didn’t build the clinic for the Whitcombs’ conscience. If they want medical language they can fund the hospital wing they keep trying to avoid.”
“Done.” She nods. “Second, the Ward–Hargreaves Memorandum. Hargreaves wants to expand the matching program but tie the release schedule to our ‘resident outcomes dashboard.’ He has a list of KPIs that read like they were built by a consultant who’s never been hungry.”
“Rewrite the clause,” I say. “Outcome metrics are internal. He gets anonymized roll-ups by quarter, not individual progress by week. If he insists on weekly reporting, he funds the staff hours to collect it, and we still don’t send anything with dates.”
“Copy,” she says, fingers already moving. “Third, the senator. His chief of staff called at six. ‘Informal inquiry’ into unlicensed sites. He’s looking for a narrative about abuse of funds. Someone is whisperingoff-book.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Two guesses,” she says. “The one who thinks his nonprofit should have gotten last year’s grant, or the one whose ex-wife stayed with us.”
“Both,” Reid offers from the end of the table. “I have a source in their office. He thinks they’ll float something to the local paper this week to see if it sticks. A ‘We’re just asking questions’ tone. Nothing that names locations.”
“Then they can ask questions,” I say. “We give them a controlled answer. Schedule a briefing with the senator’s staff next week. Mara, you run it. I want our audited statements, our public sites with licenses, and our third-party evaluations. Nothing about the pilots. If they want to ‘see a site,’ they can tour the Day Harbor Shelter with sign-in and sign-out. Reid, if a reporter calls, send them to me and I ignore it until they call twice.”
“Understood.”
Mara’s eyes flick to me and away. She’s cataloguing what I haven’t said aloud: that a call to me about the pilots will be routed to a number that reads as dead. It isn’t glory work. It’s survival. She’s the only person besides me allowed to hate that and keep her job.
