Then:
Ella:
I will be.
I set the phone down, exhaling slowly.
One step at a time.
Answers were coming.
And somehow, in the middle of grief and secrets and unfinished business …
A dangerous man with dark eyes and stitched skin had walked into my life.
I glanced toward the sofa, where my phone lay silent.
And wondered when he’d walk back into it again.
14
KANE
Jet lag should have taken me by now.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, watching shadows shift as Paris moved outside my window. Cars passing. Voices drifting up from the street below in rapid French I couldn't understand. A dog barking somewhere in the distance, insistent and lonely. Life continuing its relentless forward march whether I participated or not.
Sleep didn't come.
My mind wouldn't shut off.
Kept circling back to the same place like a dog worrying a bone.
Her.
Ella.
The way she'd looked at me across that café table this morning—was it only this morning? It felt like days ago and also like minutes. The way she'd saidyouwithout flinching, without hedging, without any of the careful distance people usually maintained around me. The way every rational part of my brain was screaming to stay away while every other part—the partsthat operated on instinct and want and need—wanted to do exactly the opposite.
I wasn't a man of indecision. You made choices fast and lived with the consequences. Simple. Clean. Efficient.
But right now?
Right now I was paralyzed by a decision that shouldn't be this hard.
Call a woman who'd made it clear she wanted me.
Or don't.
A choice that would've been automatic for most men.
The paper with Ella's number sat on the nightstand where I'd left it hours ago, folded once, corners already softening from how many times I'd picked it up and set it back down. Mocking me with its simplicity.
Ten digits.
That's all it was.
And yet it felt like a detonator to something I wouldn't be able to control once I triggered it.
