My hands are fists and my jaw is locked and there is a version of me standing in this hallway that wants to drive to him andput this man through a wall. That version is not the professional version. That version who now knows there is something growing inside her that is half me and half her and who will not tolerate — will not accept — will not allow — anyone with bad intentions anywhere near either of them.
I breathe.
I open my hands.
I make the next call. Then the next one. The restraining order. The formal identification package. The police liaison. Every step in sequence. Every step clean. My voice steady on every call because steady is what I do and I am a professional. I’m not a goon.
I am not losing my composure. I am doing my job.
I am also aware that if this man had come closer, if he had tried the door, if he had followed her, if he had been in that building when she was alone, I would have done something I could not undo and I would not have regretted it. Not for a second. Not ever.
22
Billie
The private tier goes back up after the order is filed.
I don't ask permission. I don't announce it. I sit at his desk at nine in the morning and log into my dashboard and toggle the switch and watch the tier repopulate with the subscriber list I exported before I took it down. The whole process takes about four minutes.
Declan sees me do it and he doesn't say a word.
Not one word.
That's growth. His, not mine. I was always going to put it back up. The question was whether he was going to make it into a thing. He isn't. He's making coffee.
I appreciate this man.
"I'm going live tonight," I say.
"Okay," he says.
"Public stream. The gaming one."
"Okay."
***
It feels good to be back in my own apartment. Now that the order has been filed, I feel like I can breathe again.
I go live at eight.
The stream runs clean for forty minutes. My kill count is up. Chat is in the flow state. I'm wearing the headset and I'm in the zone and I am playing better than I have in weeks because the thing I was afraid of has a name and a restraining order and can't come within five hundred feet of me, and my body has apparently translatedsafetyintoprecisionbecause I am hitting shots tonight that I couldn't hit on my best day last month.
Declan is on the couch. Reading. A book, not his phone, because he's a forty-eight-year-old man who reads physical books on the couch in the evening and that's just who he is. He's in a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He is just there just out of frame.
Declan turns a page.
He doesn't look up. He doesn't acknowledge the chat. He is the least performative person I have ever met and he is sitting on his couch reading a book while four thousand people scream about his forearms and I love him so much it makes my chest hurt.
I love him. I haven't said that. I'm saying it now, to myself, in the middle of a stream with four thousand people watching, because apparently that's the kind of moment I choose for personal revelations. I love him and he's on the couch and I'm pregnant with his baby and my chat is losing their minds and I am so happy I could throw up, which might also be the pregnancy, hard to say.
23
Declan
Igo to meet Ronan alone.
She wanted to come. I told her no. Not gently, not with an explanation. Just no. This is not her conversation. This is between two men who have been each other's constants for thirty years, and one of them has been sleeping with the other's daughter, and that man is going to stand in that kitchen and say it out loud and he's going to do it alone.
