Kristen stares at me for a long moment. I can see the calculations happening behind her eyes. The risk assessment. The weighing of options.
"Lily stays with me," she says. "Always. No matter what."
"Obviously."
"And I'm not... I'm not going to just sit around being decorative. I need something to do. Something that's mine."
"Then you keep managing the household," I say. "Until this thing with Jack is settled. After that, we figure out what you actually want to do."
Her shoulders relax slightly. Progress.
"But." I hold up a finger before she can respond. "You're not spending eight hours a day scrubbing floors and organizing closets. That's not happening."
"I don't scrub floors?—"
"You know what I mean." I pull her closer, settling her against my chest. She fits there like she was designed for it. "A few hours in the morning. Then you're done."
Kristen makes a sound that's half-laugh, half-disbelief. "You're very bossy, you know that?"
"I'm aware."
She falls quiet, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my chest. I can feel her thinking. Processing. Trying to fit this new reality into the framework of her old life.
"Tell me about yourself," I say.
Her hand stills. "You already know everything about me. You had me investigated."
True. I know her social security number, her credit score, her medical history. I know she was born in Cook County Hospital, that her father's name isn't on the birth certificate, that she graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA despite working two jobs.
But files don't tell you how someone grew up. What shaped them. Why they became who they are.
"I know facts," I say. "I want to know you."
Kristen shifts, propping her chin on my chest to look at me. Her eyes search my face for something—mockery, maybe. An angle. She won't find one.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything." The word comes out rougher than I intend. "Start at the beginning."
She's quiet for a moment. Then she takes a breath.
"My mom raised me alone. South Side. We didn't have much, but she worked hard. Two jobs sometimes three." A small smile touches her lips. "She used to leave me notes in my lunchbox. Little drawings of suns and flowers because she couldn't afford real art supplies. I kept every single one."
An unknown feeling twists in my chest. I ignore it.
"I was a good kid. Quiet. Stayed out of trouble because trouble meant my mom had to leave work early, and leaving work early meant less money, and less money meant..." She shrugs. "You know how it goes."
I don't, actually. I grew up with more money than God and a father who used violence like punctuation. But I nod anyway.
"I wanted to be a doctor since I was seven," she continues. "Our neighbor Mrs. Patterson had a heart attack right in front of me. The paramedics came and they were so calm. So in control. They saved her life like it was nothing. I thought..." She laughs softly. "I thought that was the closest thing to magic I'd ever seen."
The universe has a sick sense of humor. That's the only explanation.
Here I am—a man who has ended more lives than I can count, whose hands have done things that would make her runscreaming—and she's telling me about wanting to save people. About believing in magic.
She's sunshine wrapped in struggle. An angel who somehow ended up in bed with the devil.
And instead of letting her go, instead of doing the decent thing and pushing her back toward the light, I want to keep her. Root her here in my darkness. Make her mine so completely that she forgets there was ever a before.
