“Shower or bath?” I ask.
“Shower,” she says. “I’ll move better after.”
I leave her steam and clean water and a door I don’t close all the way because that feels like a room in a house I don’t want between us yet. In the kitchen, I make tea I know she’ll drink (ginger, honey) and coffee I’ll probably forget on a table. I put slices of toast under the broiler until they are right at the line before too much and spread butter from the silver lidded dish the chef thinks we need to feel civilized.
Walking back with the tray feels like walking up a hallway I built and never thought I would use. She is in my shirt when I return. Her hair is roughly towel-dried. She looks like a person in a regular morning, not a portrait. It hits me somewhere below the ribs in a way I should have defended against and didn’t.
She sits on the little stool at the counter, the hot pack tucked under the hem. When she reaches for the tea, her knuckles brush mine. I set the toast down and push the plate like a bargain.
“Eat. You’ll need your strength.”
She smirks, the first unguarded curl of her mouth I’ve seen that doesn’t carry anything dark. “For what?” she asks, because she won’t let me have the line unchallenged.
“For meetings,” I say, matching her. “Navarro at ten. A restricted briefing after. And because I’m going to spend the rest of the day keeping Caldwell from making you into a prop.”
She chews slowly, eyes on me like she could peel off the words and weigh the sincerity. “I got another text,” she says. “Last night, after the conservatory. I didn’t read it. I didn’t want it in the room.”
“Good,” I say. I don’t tell her about the ones on my phone from the same number, the ones Reid forwarded with the notecareful—live bait. I’ll take that contact point alone. I can control what I consume. She is not a firewall. She is not here to be burned.
The bruise-like shadows on her hips draw my eye. My hands. My grip. I should be ashamed at the thrill that gives me. I reach over and brush a crumb from her lip with my thumb. Her mouth parts on instinct. I take my thumb back like a man with restraint and put it to work on the phone.
REID:Media staging done. Caldwell’s press in twenty. We’ve secured the back gate.
ME:Keep the east perimeter soft. I want our people to come and go without being photographed—or feeling like they’re in a war zone.
REID:Understood. Navarro wants to bring a case study to the briefing.
ME:Tell her no names. We use initials and dates only.
She fidgets with the hem of my shirt restlessly. Pain pulls at her belly again and she catches the breath. I slide the heat pack higher. This is the kind of touch that teaches a body someone else is on its side. I want to be the man who teaches her that.
The phone shakes on the counter again.
REID:Caldwell live in five. We have eyes inside the room.
REID:Also—Jonah message pinged your public inbox. He’s back in the city next week.
My mouth goes hard before I can pretend I’m above it.
ME:Ignore Jonah’s message. Do not engage. If he gets close to the house, redirect him to the downtown studio with a commission that eats his week. Pay well. Make it look like a favor.
I don’t look at Aurora while I send it. I don’t want to memorize how her mouth will set when she learns I moved the board around her. She’ll hate me. I can carry that. She cannot carry Caldwell and me at the same time. My job is to keep one off her.
“Stop thinking,” she says suddenly, eyes on the ragged edge of toast she has decided to pull apart and not eat yet. “You do this thing with your face when you decide to save someone by yourself.”
I huff out a breath that almost laughs. “It’s my face.”
“It is,” she says. “I like it better when you let me help.”
“You’re helping,” I say, and I’m surprised at the truth in it. She is. Her presence in the room tells me to remember the people who are the map markers and not just the map. “Eat your toast.”
“You already said that.” But she does, tearing a piece with her teeth while holding the heat pack in place with her elbow like she has been doing this with herself on kitchen counters long before me.
I clear the tray and put the mug in the sink because doing a small thing restores order. She slips off the stool like she meant to and then winces. I catch her hand. She does not shake me off. “Bed,” I say. “You have twenty minutes before we ruin your morning with bureaucracy. Take them.”
“You coming to tuck me in?” she asks, a tease to hide a flicker of embarrassment she couldn’t keep out of her voice. She’s still new to being looked after. She covers it with bite.
I step close enough to feel the heat through the shirt, enough that her hand lands on my rib without thinking. The scar sits under her palm like a thing that has always been ours.
