Craig didn’t leave. He leaned farther into the doorframe. His eyes moved past Kayla, scanning the interior of the house with a quick, assessing sweep.
“Come on, don’t be like that. I came all the way out here.” He straightened slightly and glanced around theporch, at the modest front yard, the neighborhood. “Cute little place. Very you.”
The condescension was thin enough to pass as a compliment if you weren’t listening. Kaylawaslistening.
“We are done. You are not welcome here. You need to go.”
She wasn’t asking. She was informing. Her voice hadn’t wavered once.
But Craig didn’t move. His expression shifted into something softer, wounded, the practiced vulnerability of a man reaching into his toolbox and selecting the next instrument.
“I just want to talk. That’s all. I’ve been worried about you, KayKay. Is this really how you want to handle this?”
KayKay. I rolled my eyes. Every line out of his mouth was designed to make her the unreasonable one. I’d seen the emails in the Evidence folder. I knew exactly how this worked. The charm, and when the charm failed, the guilt, and when the guilt failed, the knife dressed up as concern.
I stepped into the hallway and became visible.
I didn’t hurry. I walked to the front door at the same pace I walked everywhere. Stopped beside Kayla, close enough that my presence changed the geometry of the doorway, but not in front of her. Beside her.
She’d had her moment. She’d held the line without flinching. Now I was here.
Jolly was already up. He appeared at my left side, having followed me from the kitchen on silent paws. Not aggressive. Ears forward, body still, that particular focused alertness that preceded a working-dog assessment. He positioned himself between Craig and the interior of the house like an engineer had placed him there.
Craig’s eyes found me. The charm recalibrated in real time, his expression cycling through surprise and then something harder as he measured what he was looking at. Theheight. The build. The way I was standing. Craig was used to being the biggest presence in a room. He wasn’t anymore, and the adjustment was visible in his jaw.
“Hey, man.” He recovered quickly, the smile sliding back into place. “Didn’t realize Kayla had company. I’m Craig. Old friend.” He extended a hand.
I didn’t take it. Didn’t introduce myself.
On the outside, I was exactly what I always was. Still, patient, the same calm I brought to every situation I’d ever walked into. On the inside, something I hadn’t felt in a long time was building behind my sternum. Not the controlled focus of a tactical scenario. Not the measured assessment of threat and response.
Rage.
This was the man who had screamed at William. Who had made a six-year-old afraid to track dirt into a house. Who had sent emails designed to make Kayla believe she was worthless, one poison dart at a time, for over six months.
I looked at Kayla. “I’ll walk him to his car.”
Not asking. Letting her know.
She stepped back from the door. No hesitation, no backward glance at Craig. She didn’t linger. Didn’t look to me for reassurance. Didn’t give Craig the satisfaction of another word.
Her body language was finished. Not defeated. Not fleeing.Done.
God. This woman.
She was everything I hadn’t known I’d been looking for, standing in a doorway in bare feet without even a bit of fear, and I was so far gone I couldn’t remember what my life had felt like before her.
She touched my arm as she passed. Brief. The weight of it barely there, but I felt it settle somewhere permanent. A transfer of trust.
She headed back toward the kitchen.
I stepped onto the porch, Jolly at my side, and pulled the door closed behind me.
Craig’s demeanor shifted the moment the door closed. The charm dropped a notch, replaced by something more openly dismissive. He stepped back and crossed his arms.
“She gets dramatic. You’ll figure that out.”
I read him the way I read a file. The rehearsed body language. The wide-planted feet, claiming space in a dominance display he’d probably picked up from a self-help book. The micro-expression that flickered across his face when he mentioned Kayla, that brief flash of contempt, and the way his eyes cut toward the house like he was calculating whether she could hear us.
