Instead, I glance up—meet his eyes like I’ve just noticed he’s still here.
I smile.
Then yawn one more time, covering my mouth.“If that’s all, I’d like to leave now.”I press my lips closed.“Unless you want to press charges for who the fuck knows what.”
My pulse stumbles.Just once.I cover it with another smirk.
“I already told you?—”
“You want to know about a girl I fucked a couple of times.”I shrug.“There’s a big list of those.I don’t keep track of them.If you need anything else, talk to my lawyer.”
“Did you do it?”he presses again.
I grin wider.“Depends on what you think I’m guilty of.”
ChapterOne
Cleo
I surface like a thing pulled from the bottom of a black sea—lungs burning, heart slamming against my ribs.There are no dreams, no images—just a blank void that spits me into awareness.
The first thing that cuts through the haze is the smell.Pine.Salt—and a trace of a familiar cologne.It clings to the sweater, swallowing my body, and seeps into my lungs until I’m dizzy.The scent forces its way in, alive and insistent, carrying the damp bite of the coastline and the fog pressing against the glass.
It should feel grounding.Instead, it tilts everything sideways, reminding me this isn’t my sweater, room, or life.
Somehow, I know—I don’t belong here.
For a heartbeat, I think I’m still in Manhattan, in that glass-and-marble apartment that had become little more than a cage—a tombstone where I was waiting for my life to be over.Not that there’s much life in me anymore.
My heart kicks hard, ribs bracing for a voice that isn’t here—his voice.The fear comes up like bile, hot and animal against my throat: the prickle at the base of my skull, the way my hands go small and hard inside the sleeves.I can hear it in my skin—the small, stupid panic that make my fingers clench and unclench without permission.But instead of him, the window is fogged and wet, fog pressed tight against the glass, rolling off the ocean in sheets.The sound of waves thunders up the cliffside.I’ve never been in a room this close to the water before.
The room tries to be both: a magnanimous, elegant living space with the hush of a country cabin.A long chaise faces a single wall of glass—a floor-to-ceiling window that frames the cliff like a portrait.Outside, the Pacific drops away in vertical blue, the surf battering rocks that look like teeth.The interior smells of polished cedar and lemon oil.An antique rug softens the chairs.
There are small luxuries—a brass lamp, thick curtains, a throw that only pretends to be rustic but melts like silk against my skin.At the same time, the place holds hollows and angles that whisper of an old cabin, something stripped down and simple, later dressed up with taste and money.The city drowned it out.
I sit up too fast, and the sweater—too big to be mine—falls off one shoulder.My bare skin prickles.There are bruises along my collarbone, some purple blooms, others already paling into a blue-green the doctor calls healing.
A thin cut near my clavicle scabs dark and ragged; a pale fingerprint bruises the side of my rib like a stamp I can’t wash away.The sweater carries a layered scent—cedar and a clean cologne—Eddie’s first.If I strain, I can pretend there’s something rougher underneath—the musk and spice of Barret’s scent mixing with Eddie’s—but maybe that’s my head making ghosts.
It shouldn’t be possible.
Neither of them is here.Which is a reality that makes me sad and yet comforted.I don’t want them to see what I’ve become.
Still, I press the fabric to my face and, for a stupid second, let the memory do its work: Eddie’s laugh breaking too loud in quiet rooms, the way his hand once found the small of my back.Barret’s cologne clinging to my hair after he leaned too close, the rasp of his voice when he wanted to be gentle and failed.A body can leave its presence trapped in the weave of cotton long after it’s gone, and for some reason, this sweater carries pieces of both.
I press the fabric to my chest like a talisman.Safe tastes like a foreign language on my tongue.I fumble for the pronunciation.I haven’t been safe for too long.This is more like a dream, which is weird since I just woke up.
My pulse settles a notch and then jumps at the creak of the hall outside.The house breathes—settling timbers, a distant door, someone walking with purpose—and every sound sketches a narrative in my head: footsteps approach, keys at the door, his voice, an apology I do and don’t want.My throat tightens at the possibility.There’s a reasonhebrought me here.
To kill me?
I hope so because I’m done.Fuck, I doubt I can continue.
I look out at the cliff beyond the window.Sea-spray mists the glass in slow, patient lines, a thousand tiny rivers where the water refuses to stay put.A gull drifts, loud and thin, then disappears into the gray like someone erasing a page.Below, the rocks keep their own counsel.
The surf claws at them and runs away, pulls back with the ocean’s steady rhythm.I have never stood at an edge like this, never let the horizon press against me with such scale.It makes the rest of the world shrink until it fits in the palm of my hand and feels ridiculous.
I rub my thumb into a bruise until the sting flares.The movement is ridiculous and necessary: proof that I am here, that my skin answers me.The sweater slips again, and I tug it up, hunching like someone who has had a long day and is still allowed one small comfort.My shoulders round in on itself, and, for a second, the smallness feels like a thing I can carry.
