“I haven’t saidmineto you,” I answer. “I’ve saidstay. The difference matters.”
“You saystaylike a command,” she retorts.
“It is one,” I say. “And you’re allowed to ignore it.”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” I say, and take my hand away from her neck. The loss is immediate as a draft when a door opens. She feels it; so do I.
She breathes out through her nose as if she’s clearing a brush loaded too heavy.
“Tell me what you’re going to do about Caldwell,” she says. “Not slogans, the truth.”
“Legal refuses locations. Ops hardens perimeters without looking like there’s something to find. PR speaks in results and keeps our words under sixty per statement. If he calls ahearing, Hamilton & Reyes will bring case law on survivor safety and force him to threaten contempt on camera if he wants to force details. He won’t. If he tries to subpoena personal communications, we will produce what our policy says we keep and not one page more. I will not give him a woman’s name and a map to her door.”
“And if he shows up on your lawn with cameras?” she asks.
“We don’t open the gate,” I say. “I speak at a podium two blocks away and say the words that keep victims from being turned into content.”
“You like the fight,” she observes.
“I like the outcome,” I say. “The fight is a cost.”
“And me?” she asks. “What am I in that equation?”
“Both cost and outcome,” I say. “You are making work that matters and because you can hurt us if you point it in wrong direction. That’s the truth you wanted at this table.”
She looks at me for three seconds. Her pupils widen the way they do in low light. The candle nearest us flares on a draft. The rain thickens, dulling the sound of the garden.
“You’re dangerous,” she says. “And I keep coming closer.”
“You’re reckless,” I say. “And you keep stopping at exactly the right place.”
“Do I?”
“Yes,” I say. “You walked out of my room the first night. You walked out of the studio when it turned into something you didn’t plan. You came to the clinic and didn’t turn my patient into a sketch without asking permission in your head first. You came to dinner tonight, and you let me feed you one bite, and you didn’t mistake that for consent to everything.”
“You think I need your approval,” she says, sharper. “Like a gold star on good behavior.”
“No,” I say. “I think you need respect. I’m telling you I’m giving it.”
She doesn’t answer. She finishes her wine. She sets the glass down with more care than she did the first time.
I stand. She tilts her head back to look up at me. It puts her mouth inches from mine. The room gets narrower and taller.
“You have a choice,” I say. “Stay and see everything. No more guarded tours. No more staged rooms. Or walk away now while the door is still light. I will not make that decision for you. I will not let Caldwell make it for you. I am asking you to make it because tomorrow I am going to put you in rooms that will change you and I am not going to apologize afterward.”
“What if I want you to?”
“What?” I ask.
“Kiss me,” she says. The words are too precise to be a plea.
My hands tighten enough for both of us to feel it. I could. I want to.
“Tomorrow.” I step back instead. “No more secrets.”
She goes still. Then she nods once, as if she’s agreed to a thing that wasn’t offered out loud. She stands, chair legs whispering against the rug, spine straight. Her legs tremble—not from fear. From the energy that would have been used up if I’d said yes. She handles it. She always does.
