“I don’t want anyone else—I was you—us—to be back in,” he continued. “I just didn’t know if you wanted me to say that yet.”
There it was.
“You just did,” I whispered.
I leaned into him, our foreheads touching. And for the first time since we found our way back to each other, my mind went quiet. I was no longer waiting for the other shoe.
All I felt was peace.
13
Istood outside the tape, cold biting through my wool overcoat while fire chewed through what was left of the Northside Victorian. Three stories. All brick. Now gutted to a blackened skeleton. The engines beat me here, water already pooling around my boots, running in dirty ribbons toward thestorm drains. Smoke twisted thick and heavy into the sky like it had something to say.
Firefighters moved with purpose—seasoned, fluid, dancing between danger and duty. Radios cracked. Hoses groaned. Someone shouted a status update over the roar of lingering flame.
I barely registered any of it.
Until I saw them.
A dark-skinned man—big, built like a damn linebacker—held a woman against his chest while she sobbed into him. Her cries were muffled, raw and shattering, the kind that came from losing more than just walls. His eyes were glassy, wild, fixed on the house like he could force it to stand back up if he stared hard enough. There was something behind that look I couldn’t name.
Grief, maybe.
Rage.
Or a question no one could answer.
And then Sanaa pulled up in her graphite-gray Mercedes-Benz CLE Coupe—its paint catching the emergency strobes in sleek, expensive flashes. The engine went quiet, but the presence of it lingered.
The driver’s door opened and she stepped out like the night didn’t dare touch her. Like she hadn’t been choking on my dick aas recently as this morning.
A black Italian leather coat fell to mid-thigh, butter-soft and structured, the collar trimmed in dark sable fur that framed her face instead of softening it. It moved when she moved, catching the wind like it understood it was meant to be seen. Her heels were needle-sharp, clicking against the wet pavement without hesitation, navigating puddles and ash like she’d planned this walk.
I watched her approach the woman. Her movements changed there—her hands soft, her voice low, measured. Whatever she said grounded the woman enough to make her nod. The man answered, voice rough. Sanaa met him without flinching, chin lifted, listening in a way that made people talk.
Then he looked up. Right at me.
Not a threat. Just measuring. Calculating if I was part of the problem.
Sanaa turned and finally acknowledged me before walking over.
“You wanna know what I’m doing here,” she said.
“You read my mind.”
"It’s a client’s home. Or was." Her gaze didn’t flinch from the wreckage. “A lot of art was inside. Original pieces from the Harlem Renaissance.”
My stomach dropped. “You serious?”
“As a fire,” she murmured.
I studied her. “That’s twice now. Two fires. Two scenes with your name in the middle.”
“I didn’t set them, Tariq.”
“I didn’t say that.” I took a beat. “But you’re gonna have to explain how your business keeps running into mine.”
She sighed and folded her arms. “There’s a world of collectors out there. Some above board, some under it. You know that. You know what I do.”
