“I’m still here, aren’t I?” she said, motioning to herself. “I didn’t run away.”
But then I forced myself to breathe, slow and deliberate. Shewashere. Shewassafe. That was what mattered. The rest—the anger, the threat of what could’ve happened—had to wait. I couldn’t lose control now, not with her in the room, not like this.
I let my eyes linger on her for a moment longer, taking in the curve of her shoulders, the way the candlelight kissed her skin. Just watching her, memorizing, letting the heat between us simmer without acting on it.
Step by step, I closed the distance, letting her feel the weight of me before I even touched her. My hand hovered near her arm, tracing the air just above her skin, letting her know I was here, and that I wouldn’t be leaving.
We sat there in silence for a while, the candlelight flickering across her skin and casting long shadows on the walls. Finally, I had to break it.
“It’s fucking dark in here,” I said, voice low but steady, trying to anchor myself in something ordinary, something real.
She shrugged. “My dad always forgot to pay the electricity bill when I was younger. I’m used to it.”
I couldn’t stand that piece of shit. My jaw tightened at the thought of him, and a piercing sense of protectiveness flared. But I didn’t care about the debt anymore. I just wanted to make sure she never had to go back there, never had to face that life again.
The thought lingered in the back of my mind, quiet but insistent: I needed to keep her safe.
Instead I said, “You sound very resourceful.”
“Oh yeah,” she said, nudging me in the side with her elbow. “I may not be a tough mafia man, but I get by.”
I let a faint smile tug at the corner of my lips, shaking my head slightly.Resourceful,she said. Yet even in her teasing, there was a spark of steel, a stubbornness I couldn’t ignore.
And as I watched her, I realized something else—she didn’t seem mad I’d left this morning. That caught me off guard, a strange relief threading through me.
Or was she just pretending? Ugh.
I shook my head, forcing the thought away. Stop analyzing. Stop overthinking. She was here. Safe. That’s what mattered. Everything else could wait.
“I didn’t realize how reliant on AC I had become,” she snorted, letting out a small laugh that was half amusement, half exhaustion.
I raised an eyebrow, smirk tugging at the corner of my lips. “Yeah? And here I thought you were supposed to be tough.”
She nudged me lightly with her elbow again, rolling her eyes. “I am tough. I just like being comfortable too, okay?”
I let a low chuckle escape, letting the warmth of the moment settle between us. “Guess I’ll just have to keep you here forever. There was no AC back at your place.”
She shot me a sidelong glance, a faint flush rising to her cheeks. “Yeah… well, lucky me, I guess.”
Her tone was light, but the weight of our arrangement lingered in the silence. I carefully slid closer, letting my presence fill the space between us without pressing too hard. My hand hovered near her arm for a moment before settling lightly on her hand, warm and grounding.
She didn’t flinch. Instead, her eyes softened, and for a second, the tension in her shoulders eased. I felt a quiet pull tighten in my chest—something protective, something more—but I stayed still, letting her adjust to my nearness, letting her know without words that she wasn’t alone.
Chapter 22
Tessa
It finally felt like I was getting somewhere. With Felix’s help, I’d hauled out three more dumpsters of trash, and the brownstone no longer looked like a hoarder’s house. It had officially been downgraded to “messy” status.
I’d sorted everything worth keeping into their proper rooms—office supplies in the office, linens in the closet or bedroom—and was working on putting them away, though I kept getting sidetracked by some new mess along the way.
The “new mess” I stumbled on today was some kind of sticky substance smeared across the floor of one of the unused bedrooms. I’d found it the hard way; by stepping in it while I was trying to put clean sheets on the bed.
“Fuck,” I muttered, looking at my foot.
With my clean foot, I hopped toward the bathroom, wobbling like an idiot and clutching the wall for balance. I nearly toppled over more than once, but somehow managed not to faceplant.
I finally made it to the bathroom and stuck my foot in the tub, scrubbing at the sticky gunk with a wad of toilet paper first, then rinsing it under the faucet. It took way longer than it should have, and I nearly slipped twice just trying to balance on one leg while I cleaned the other.
