"You left," she says again, quieter. "And I don't blame you. God knows you had reasons. But I stayed. I had to learn things. See things. Make peace with things."
"Mari—"
"I'm not angry. Not anymore. I'm just tired of pretending any of us are clean."
We sit with that truth for a moment, the phone connection carrying our shared exhaustion across the distance. I press my back against the tree, feeling the ridges of our old initials carved deep when we thought this place would always be home.
La Sirena's kitchen smells like comfort: garlic, onions, cumin, some delightful combination that means Sera's cooking. She stands at the counter with her back to me, the wooden spoon moving in steady circles through whatever she's creating. Her shoulders are tense beneath the thin cotton of her shirt, and I fight the urge to press my mouth to the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, to feel her relax under my touch.
She knows I'm here. The slight pause in her stirring tells me that much. But she doesn't turn, doesn't acknowledge me beyond that microscopic hesitation.
I watch her for a moment from the doorway. Watch the careful way she holds herself, the controlled movements that speak of hypervigilance. Then she turns, and my chest constricts. She's looking at me the way prey looks at predators:the careful study of threat. The same micro-expressions she described using with Julian, now aimed at me like I'm something to survive.
"Dinner's almost ready," she says, voice carefully neutral. But her eyes are still tracking, still measuring. Is his jaw tight? Are his hands clenched? What mood is he carrying into my kitchen?
"Smells good."
We're speaking in code, both of us. The real conversation happens in the space between words, in what we're not saying. I sit at the table. She brings plates, her body angled so she doesn't have to turn her back to me completely. The domestic choreography we perfected in Homestead, but all the warmth has leaked out.
She sets the salt between us. I reach for it. Our fingers don't touch. We're both too careful for that. In Homestead, every shared object was a bridge. The coffee cup passed between hands. The wooden spoon offered for tasting. Contact disguised as coincidence, building intimacy through accumulated touches.
Now even the salt carries distance.
She is being hunted by the same people my family works with.
We eat in parallel silence. The food is perfect. Of course it is. Sera cooks the way some people pray, with total devotion. But I barely taste it. I'm too aware of her watching me, still assessing me like I’m a threat. Too aware of the way her lips close around the fork, the movement of her throat when she swallows. My cock stirs despite everything, my body refusing to acknowledge the distance my mind is trying to maintain.
"You visited your father," she says finally, not quite a question.
I push rice around my plate. "Jorge's dying slower than he'd like."
More silence. More careful consumption of perfect food that tastes like sawdust in my mouth. The woman I adore sits three feet away, close enough that I can smell the vanilla of her shampoo, and the distance might as well be miles.
She clears the plates, never quite meeting my eyes. I watch her move through the kitchen, her kitchen now, claimed through cooking and care, and think about what she's not telling me. The way her hips sway slightly when she walks makes my hands itch to grab her, to press her against the counter and remind us both what we are beneath all this careful distance.
This morning she left with just "running errands." But Logan mentioned Reyes, mentioned meetings. She's been investigating something, building plans with Logan while I sat in that briefing learning about my father's sins. We're both keeping secrets, maintaining our own siloes even while the walls between them crack.
"Thank you for dinner," I say, standing.
"Of course."
The distance between us isn't the table anymore. It's not the careful way we passed the salt without touching. It's everything we haven't told each other. Her secrets about Julian, about the Markovic family, about whatever she's planning. My visit to Jorge, the staying question I couldn't answer, the recognition that I understand his mathematics because I've been living by the same equations.
She turns to the stove, adjusting something that doesn't need adjusting. Still monitoring. Still maintaining distance. Still treating me like I might become the threat she's been running from.
She reaches for the wooden spoon, and for just a moment, her guard drops. I see the exhaustion underneath the vigilance, the woman who's been running for six months finally starting to feel the weight of it.
"Sera," I start, but she shakes her head.
"Not—"
"We can't keep doing this," I cut her off, my voice rough. "This distance. These secrets."
She grips the wooden spoon tighter.
"You went on some bullshit errand today," I say. "And I went to see my father. And meanwhile the Markovics are—"
"Are what?" She turns to face me fully now, and there's something dangerous in her eyes. "Are your father's business partners? Are the people your family has been in bed with for fifteen years?"
