"So it's over," she says.
"The danger is over. Yes."
She nods. Wraps her hands tighter around the mug. Looks down at the coffee.
"Which means I can go back to my place," she says.
It's not a question. It's a statement of fact, delivered in the same tone I'd use. Clean. Accurate. And underneath it, something else. Something she's not saying.
"You can," I say.
The kitchen clock ticks. Outside the window, the grounds are white with frost. The same grey January landscape she looked out at yesterday morning when she asked me about the mandate, and I told her the truth because this woman gets the truth.
She still gets the truth.
"I don't want you to go," I say.
Her eyes come up. Fast.
"That's not a demand," I say. "It's not a condition. You are free to walk out of this house whenever you want. Gregor will drive you. Your apartment is safe. Your life is waiting for you. Nothing I say next changes any of that."
She's watching me with that expression I recognize. The one that means she's thinking fast behind the stillness.
"But I need you to know," I say, "that the last forty-eight hours have changed something for me. And I don't think it's something that changes back."
She sets the mug down. Her hands are steady.
"I spent all day yesterday telling myself I was protecting you," I continue. "That I was being decent. That the right thing to do was keep my distance and manage the situation and let you gowhen it was safe." I pause. "I was wrong. Not about protecting you. About the distance. The distance was me being a coward."
"You're not a coward."
"I am when it comes to this." I hold her gaze. "I don't do this. I don't sit in rooms reading with someone and feel like my life is better for it. I don't carry people upstairs and want to do it again. I don't wake up at four in the morning wanting someone so badly it overrides every rational thought I've had in the last decade."
Her lips part. Color floods her face and throat.
"You asked me yesterday about a contract," I say. "An arrangement. A transaction. And I said no because I didn't want you to think that's what this was."
"I remember."
"I'm asking you something different now." I lean forward. My forearms on the counter. My eyes on hers. "Stay. Not as a contract. Not as an arrangement. Not because of a mandate or a deadline or because you need protection. Stay because I want you here. Because I think you want to be here. Because this —" I gesture between us, the space that has been charged since the moment she sat in my chair and argued about Edith Wharton "— is real. I think we both know it's real."
She doesn't say anything for a long moment.
I wait. I'm good at waiting. It's one of my better skills, the ability to sit inside an uncomfortable silence and let it resolve on its own terms.
"Your uncle's mandate," she says quietly.
"Irrelevant."
"It's not irrelevant, Iosif. You have a deadline."
"I had a deadline before you walked into my club. It's not why I'm asking."
"People will think it is."
"I don't care what people think."
"Your family will think it is."
