My eyes are heavy. The room is dimming at the edges, the world narrowing to the sound of his breathing and the cool press of the pillow and the warm weight of blankets that don't smell like bleach.
"I knew you'd come for me." The words are dissolving as I say them. Slurring into sleep. "I knew all of you would. Even when I told myself you wouldn't. I knew."
Silence. His hand finds mine on top of the covers. Holds it.
"I will always come for you." His voice sounds different. Rough in a way I've never heard from Atlas, like the words are being dragged over something sharp on their way out. "Always. Do you hear me? There is nowhere on this earth you could go where we wouldn't find you. Where… I wouldn't find you."
I want to answer. Want to tell him I'm sorry for running. Want to tell him I understand why he said no and that I forgive him and that the forgiveness came probably as soon as Bane stepped through that door and confirmed that the three of them cared about me enough to do something to get me back.
But sleep is pulling me under the way the ocean pulls you under—warm and vast and absolute—and the last thing I feel is his thumb moving across my knuckles in a slow, steady rhythm.
And then nothing.
For the first time in five days, I drift off into a peaceful sleep and dream of nothing.
Chapter 11
Iwake up alone.
The realization takes a few seconds to land—my body bracing for the fluorescent hum, the concrete ceiling, the thin mattress. Instead: blackout curtains. A pillow so soft my head has sunk into it like a stone into water. Sheets that smell like laundry detergent and nothing else.
No bleach. No institutional soap. No one else's sweat.
The hotel.Right.
I sit up. The room is dark except for a sliver of light under the curtains and the blue glow of a new phone on the nightstand. Plugged in. Charging. Someone put it there while I was sleeping.
The suite is quiet. Actually quiet—the deep, padded silence of thick walls and expensive insulation. I keep waiting for the facility sounds to fill the gap. The crying. The lullaby through the wall.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. My body reports in: stiff shoulders, sore ribs, the welts on my back pulling when I stretch. The bruise on my cheekbone throbs with my pulse. Everything hurts, but it's a manageable hurt. A healing hurt. The kind that means the worst is over.
I grab the phone off the charger and pad through the suite barefoot—the living room with its pale furniture, the kitchen. Everything still.
I stop at the second bedroom. Push the door open.
The bed is made. The room stripped clean—no clothes on the chair, no dent in the pillow, no trace of the man who was sleeping here twelve hours ago. Like he was never here at all.
Bane's gone.
Atlas's plan. Bane first, then me. Staggered return. He probably left hours ago—walked out while I was unconscious, buttoned his jacket the way he always does, squared his shoulders, and went home to play the dutiful son who pulled an all-nighter or two at the library.
I stand in the doorway of his empty room and try not to think about how it felt to wake up in the cell with his chest against my back and his hands laced through mine. Try not to compare it to this—a king bed in a penthouse suite, surrounded by luxury, and the absence of a prison mattress hitting me like something I don't have a name for.
On the kitchen island, a note. Atlas's handwriting—precise, slightly slanted, the penmanship of someone who was taught by hand at an expensive school.
Max—
Call if you need anything. Rest today. There's food in the fridge or order whatever you want through room service—charge it to the room. I'll check in tonight.
Don't open the door for anyone you don't know.
— A
Below it, a room service menu and a keycard with the suite number written on the back. I open the fridge. Stocked—water, juice, fruit, deli containers, yogurt. Not hotel minibar fare. Someone went shopping. Atlas, probably, or someone he sent.
Everything is taken care of down to the last detail.
I eat standing up. Yogurt and a handful of grapes and half a turkey sandwich that I don't taste. I gulp down some instant coffee and eat until I’m full. My body accepts the food mechanically—fuel in, engine running. The hunger is there but distant, like a signal coming from far away.
