“You have a two-bedroom on the Upper West Side and a Peloton you never use.Your assistant thinks you’re in Tulum.I sent the email myself.”
That lands.I see it—the flicker behind his eyes as he realizes how much I’ve planned.How far ahead I’ve been thinking while he was unconscious.He’s recalculating.Adjusting.Trying to find the gap.What I don’t tell him iswhyI told his assistant he was in Tulum, and it sure isn’t for vacation.Not exactly.
“My phone,” he says.“Where’s my phone?”
“Safe.”
“People will track it.”
“I turned it off.It’s in a Faraday bag in the trunk of my car.”I pause.“I watch a lot of true crime podcasts, Charles.Don’t insult me.”
He goes quiet.Not defeated quiet—processing quiet.His eyes move around the room in a way I haven’t seen before.Not panicked.Methodical.The window.The door.The distance between the bed and the wall.The way the restraints connect to the rails.
He catches me watching him do it and stops.
“The toast is cold,” he says.Easy.Casual.Like we’re not both pretending I didn’t just watch him case the room.
I bring him fresh toast because that’s what a good girlfriend does.
But I check the restraints twice before I leave.
27
Luke
The foam goes up easy.Measure, cut, press, adhesive.The kind of work that lets your hands lead while your brain goes somewhere else.
My brain goes upstairs.
I can hear them through the ceiling.Not words—the soundproofing’s already catching most of that.But rhythm.Tone.The architecture of a fight I can’t see but can feel through the bones of this house.
Her voice is steady.Even.The same pitch she uses on the phone when she’s selling something she knows the other person doesn’t want to buy.Controlled.Professional.Like she’s running a meeting where only one person gets to leave.
His voice is different.It spikes and drops.Rises into something sharp, then pulls back.Testing.Probing.Looking for the crack.He sounds like a man who’s used to winning arguments and can’t understand why the rules have changed.
I press another panel into place and think about Emily.
Emily never argued like that.Emily argued the way she did everything—wide-open, loud, honest.She’d tell me I was wrong and she’d tell me why and she’d be right about sixty percent of the time and we’d both know it.There was no strategy to it.No angles.Just two people who loved each other enough to fight ugly and come back to the same bed.
I miss that.Not the fighting.The coming back.
Above me, Marin’s voice dips low.I can’t hear the words but I know the register.She’s landing something.Making a point that doesn’t leave room for a response.The silence that follows is heavy.The kind of silence where someone just got pinned to the wall without being touched.
I smooth the seam on the panel and step back.
She’s good.Whatever she’s saying up there, she’s winning.And the man she’s saying it to—Charles, strapped to my old bed, injured and furious—doesn’t know he’s already lost.Not because she’s smarter.Because she’s more committed.She’ll outlast him.She’ll outlast anyone.I’ve known her less than a week and I know that the way I know which boards are rotten before I pull them up.Some things you just know.
I wonder what Emily would think of her.
I wonder what Emily would think of me, standing in our basement, soundproofing the walls so the neighbors can’t hear the man my client tied to our bed.
Our bed.
I press my hand flat against the wall.Hold it there.
It’s not our bed anymore.It’s not our house.It’s not our anything.It’s Marin’s.She bought it.She owns it.Whatever she’s doing with it is her business.
Except I’m still here.
