Knox exhales. The tension in his jaw loosens. "Good," he says. "Now we're starting in the right place." He shifts lanes, checking mirrors. "Leave things out if you want. Just don't feed me things you know are false."
"And… you'll still help me?"
"If I wasn't planning on it," he says, "I would have let those guys walk you out of that lot."
My nails bite crescents into my jeans as I remember their measured, patient stride. How my legs moved without thinking, veering hard toward him.
I lift my head long enough to glance at the side mirror, then press my forehead to my knees. The car smells of him. Hotel soap and leather, so close it sits on my tongue. I remember him too easily, and the reminder hurts.
"You're angry," I murmur.
"Yeah. But not with you."
My chest tightens. Men are always angry with me. For the wrong tone. The wrong question. The wrong face.
"You're not… mad I didn't tell you the truth?" I ask.
"I'm mad someone put that look in your eyes," he says. The words go low enough to vibrate in my chest. "Who were they exactly?”
My spine goes rigid, every instinct I've trained for years screaming at me to deflect, minimize, redirect.
"They work for…" My throat closes. Saying it will make it real. Will make him real. Will make the invisible leash around my throat visible. "They work for people I should've left behind," I say.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting right now."
"Who makes the kind of mess you have to run from?"
Silence stretches between us like a rope pulled tight. He should snap. Shove me out of the car. Instead, he watches the road, letting the silence build. The heater hums. My heart beats frantically.
He's not pushing. He's waiting. I break first.
"My father."
Knox's jaw flexes. "What kind of messes?"
My stomach lurches. "The forgettable kind," I say. "The ones no one important wants to think about."
"That's a poetic way to say bodies."
A shiver slices down my back. "I never said bodies."
"You didn't have to." Steady. Measured. "Men in coats. Earpieces. Private sweep of a lot. They're not there for a missing curfew."
"I'm a nurse. He likes having one in the family."
Knox adjusts in his seat. The movement brings him closer. Or maybe I'm just more aware of him now, of the heat radiating off him in the small space between us.
The words come out flat, my voice drifting somewhere above myself.
"When someone overdoses at a party, or when a man hits a woman and panics, and calling an ambulance attracts headlines. So he calls me. I patch them up. Clean blood. Write notes. Keep secrets so no one important ever has to know."
His knuckles go white on the wheel. "How long?"
"Years." It cracks coming out. "Since nursing school."
"And you just… went along with it." The words land like a slap he didn't mean to throw.
