I answer.
“Yeah?”
She’s asking about the railing.Questions about the house, the timeline, what it’ll take.But that’s not what I’m hearing.What I’m hearing is underneath the words—tight, controlled, fractured in a place she thinks she’s hiding.
“Give me an hour,” I say.
I hang up.Leave a fifty on the bar.
I’m halfway to the door when she speaks.
“Luke.”
I stop.
“I’ll see you tonight?”
“We’ll see,” I say.
She doesn’t respond.I don’t look back.
Outside, the sun hits the cut on my arm and it stings like a reminder.Two men just tried to break me in a bar.A woman I barely know is breaking me from thirty miles away with nothing but a phone call and a voice that can’t hold itself together.
I start the truck.Head toward Marin’s.
I don’t know what I’m driving into.But I doubt I’m coming back to the Lamplighter tonight.
34
Marin
Igo back in at noon.Because that’s what I do.I get knocked down and I walk back into the room with another tray and take a seat across from him.
Charles is waiting.He knew I’d come back.He always knows.
“I’m going to keep saying it until you hear it.”Charles adjusts against the headboard.Winces at his ribs.Settles.“You’re not wife material.Not because there’s something wrong with you—because there’s something broken in the way you love.You don’t love people, Marin.You acquire them.You pitch them.You close them.And when they try to leave the deal, you—” He lifts his wrists.The restraints pull taut.“Well.This.”
I stand up.The chair scrapes against the floor.My hands are shaking but my face is still, my face is always still, my face is a goddamn monument to composure.“And you cheat.”
“It's not cheating if itisthe deal, Marin.”
“Fuck you.”
“The flower was a nice touch, though,” he says.“Really sold the delusion.”
I pick up the tray.The flower tips over.Water spills across the toast.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” I say.My voice doesn’t break.It doesn’t.It bends in a place no one can see, but it doesn’t break.
“We won’t,” he says.“Because tomorrow will be exactly like today.And the day after that.And the day after that.You can keep me here forever, Marin.But you can’t make me love you.That’s the one thing you can’t close.”
I walk out.Close the door.Lean against the hallway wall.
The tray is still in my hands.Wet toast.Dead flower.Two pills he didn’t take.I stare at it like it’s a performance review—all that preparation, all that effort, and the client still walked.
Except this client can’t walk.And he still won.
From behind the door, silence.He’s done.He said what he came to say—what he’s been saving up behind the groaning and the threats and the demands to be untied.He waited until I came in with coffee and a flower and hope, and then he used the exact same words from the exact same Tuesday, and he smiled while he did it.
