Chapter Three
CHELSEA HAD BEEN INmany rooms in her life that weren't designed for people like her. Hospital rooms, mostly, which were designed for bodies rather than people, and before that, Francine's living room, which was designed for photographs rather than living. But this conference room on the thirty-fourth floor of Cannizzaro Tower was something else entirely.
For starters, there was no long table. No parade of chairs arranged for maximum intimidation, no speakerphone crouching in the center like a spider waiting for a call. Instead, there was a living area that looked like it belonged in a magazine Chelsea would never buy—-deep leather sofas the color of espresso, a low glass table with nothing on it (who had a table with nothing on it?), and in the far corner, a wine and coffee bar with bottles she was fairly certain she couldn't afford even if she saved for a year. The other side had a dining area, sleek and unused, as if meals happened here sometimes but were never the point.
But the thing that kept pulling her gaze was the television.
It was enormous and white-framed and mounted on the wall like itwasthe wall, and instead of being off or showing news or whatever billionaires watched (stock tickers? other billionaires?), it was cycling through a series of artworks. A Monet dissolved into a Vermeer dissolved into something modern and angular that Chelsea couldn't name but found oddly calming. She wondered if someone had chosen these paintings specifically or if they came preloaded, the way the art in her hospital room had been chosen by someone who believed that a watercolor of a lighthouse could make a person feel less like they were dying.
The entire fourth wall was glass, and Toronto glittered beyond it like something that had been polished for her arrival, which it obviously hadn't been, but that didn't stop Chelsea from feeling a small, private thrill every time she looked at it. Three years asleep. And now this. A city made of light, thirty-four floors below, going about its business as if it had no idea that Chelsea Regis was sitting on a leather couch that probably cost more than a car, waiting for a husband she'd met approximately twelve minutes ago.
She was still processing the wordhusbandwhen Johnny came back from the counter carrying a latte that he set down on the glass table with the delicacy of someone defusing a bomb.
"Here you go."
And oh, the smell.
Chelsea closed her eyes.
Coffee didn't do to her what it did to most people. It didn't make her sharper or faster or more awake. If anything, it did the opposite, and she'd never fully understood why until the third week of rehabilitation, when the ward's coffee machine broke and the particular ache that replaced it helped her understand what she'd actually been reaching for all those mornings.
It wasn't the caffeine.
It was the smell.
Because the smell of coffee was the smell of 6 AM in a kitchen where her father was already up, standing at the counter in his old university t-shirt, measuring grounds with the focus of a man performing surgery. He made terrible coffee. Truly awful. But the smell of it brewing was the smell of being safe, of being small enough to sit on a kitchen stool and swing her legs, of a world where the worst thing that could happen was running out of milk.
She'd lost that world. She'd lost him. But the smell remained, and every time it reached her, something in her chest unclenched just a little, the way a fist opens when it realizes it's been holding on to something that's already gone.
"Thank you, Johnny." She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. "I really appreciate it."
Johnny shifted his weight, looking uncomfortable in the particular way people did when they weren't used to being genuinely thanked. "Just doing my job."
"I appreciate it all the same."
There was that smile again. She was so nice. Too nice, actually, for the likes of his boss, and as soon as the thought came up, he was no longer able to resist blurting out, "Why didn't you just say you were his wife?"
Chelsea hadn't had a chance to answer with the door opening, and her husband walking in.
Olivio noticed the awkwardness in the room as soon as he entered. The boy was standing too close to the couch, holding an empty tray against his chest like a shield, and his wife was looking up at Johnny with an expression that could only be described as mid-sentence. His expression turned inscrutable as Johnny awkwardly excused himself before leaving, but the tips of the boy's ears were crimson, and Olivio absorbed that the way he absorbed everything—-instantly, completely, without forgetting.
His wife, meanwhile, was about to stand up. He saw her left hand go to the armrest first, the same bracing gesture he'd noticed in the hallway, and he was across the room before she could push herself to her feet.
"There's no need to rise on my account."
A smile touched her lips. The tone he used, the speed with which he'd crossed the room to get to her—-all of it was recognizable to a girl who'd spent her whole life watching people's actions for what they really meant rather than what they said.
"I'm sorry about my limp. But it's not as serious as it looks. My doctor believes it will get better in time."
