When I open my eyes again, the hallway hasn’t changed. My mother is still sick. My father is still alive. The week is still burning away.
But something in me is quieter.
I slide my hand from her waist to her jaw, my thumb resting just below her ear. “I should send you home.”
“You won’t.”
“Probably not.”
She gives me the faintest smile.
And standing there in the sterile light, with her still close enough to feel and the whole ruined machinery of my life waiting just outside this moment, I realize that naming what I feel may not matter as much as one other, more brutal fact:
Whatever it is, it already has me.
30
ZATANNA
The next morning,I walk into the office feeling different.
Not fixed. Not settled. Definitely not sane. But different.
For once, the difference doesn’t feel bad.
The city is gray outside, all wet sidewalks and steam rising from vents, but I feel oddly light as I step out of the elevator and onto the office floor. Not because anything is resolved. God, nothing is resolved. Aleksei’s mother is still in the hospital. His father is still a snake in an expensive suit. The inheritance clock is still ticking.
But somewhere between the hospital hallway and the silence in the car home, I stopped pretending this is just sex.
It isn’t. I know that now.
I know I feel something for him. More than wanting him. More than the way my body reacts when he looks at me. More than the stupid thrill of danger and secrecy and all the ways he keeps rearranging my life without permission.
And yes, maybe it’s insane to admit that after two weeks.
Maybe I should be more skeptical. More cynical. More capable of self-preservation.
But the truth is still the truth. Ifeelsomething for him.
And I’m not even fully terrified of that yet.
So I walk in with coffee in one hand and my bag on my shoulder and for the first time in days, I don’t feel like I’m carrying around a bruise where my heart should be.
I feel almost... hopeful. Which is probably why the universe chooses that exact moment to ruin me.
“Morning,” I say as I pass Owen’s desk.
He looks up. Then immediately looks down.
Lina is by the printer. She hears me, turns halfway, gives me a tight little smile, then suddenly remembers something very important on the paper tray.
Vivian doesn’t even bother pretending. She just watches me over the rim of her glasses with the kind of stillness that tells me something is wrong before anyone says a word.
I slow. The floor sounds different, strikingly quiet. That strange hush offices get when everyone is pretending not to look at the same thing.
My skin goes cold.
I keep walking toward my desk anyway, because maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe they’re all tired. Maybe I’m just primed for paranoia after everything that happened.
