She blinks. “Are you ordering me?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth twitches. “Hot.”
I shoot her a look that should shut that down.
It doesn’t.
She wraps the blanket tighter and sits at the table, watching me like she’s not letting me off the hook.
I start cooking. Eggs. Toast. Something simple. Something normal.
My hands know what to do. My mind doesn’t.
Riley rests her chin in her palm. “Okay. So. The call.”
I crack an egg one-handed to distract myself. “Later.”
“Crewe,” she says, gentle but stubborn. “You can’t tell me you’re fine when you’re clearly not.”
I glance at her.
She’s awake now. Fully. Those blue eyes locked on mine, soft with concern in a way that makes my chest ache.
I don’t deserve that kind of care.
And yet she keeps giving it.
I set a plate in front of her when the eggs are done. Toast. Coffee. The basic building blocks of pretending the world isn’t falling apart.
Riley takes one look at the food and then at me. “You’re trying to distract me.”
“Yes.”
She picks up her fork anyway. “It’s working. Slightly.”
She takes a bite, chews, then exhales. “Okay. I had a thought.”
I still. “What kind of thought?”
“The kind I hate,” she says, setting her fork down. “The kind that shows up at 3 a.m. and won’t leave me alone.”
My gaze sharpens. “Talk.”
“There’s something at my lab,” she says quietly. “Something I didn’t grab yesterday because I wasn’t thinking straight.”
My stomach tightens. “What?”
She hesitates. “It’s a hardware key. Not the kind someone can just guess or hack with a password. It’s… it’s old-school. Physical. And it locks one of my offline backups.”
I watch her carefully. “And you need it.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Because if someone is trying to steal my work, I need to know exactly what they have. And what they don’t.”
I nod once. “We’ll go.”
Relief flashes in her face. “Really?”
