Chapter sixteen
Tessa
The rideshare app spins in my palm like it has somewhere better to be. Every little car icon on the map is grayed out or creeping in the wrong direction, and the estimated wait time keeps revising itself upward with the cheerful indifference of bad news. I mutter something unflattering about half the city deciding to leave at once.
George glances at my screen without asking permission.
"My house is three blocks from here," he says. "I can drive you home."
I look up at him, trying to locate the angle. There's nothing in his expression that looks like strategy. He's just standing there with his hands in his jacket pockets, not leaning in, not performing patience. The app refreshes: forty-two minutes. I have approximately zero dignity left to protect.
"Fine," I say.
We fall into step together on the pavement without discussing it, which feels like a small and telling thing. The rain is holding itself back leaving a cool and faintly electric feeling in the air andI'm aware, suddenly, that I dressed for the indoor temperature of a gala rather than the actual night.
George doesn't walk fast the way some men do. He walks next to me. We move at the same pace.
We walk in silence for a while.
The first block is unremarkable: brownstones, a wine bar still glowing amber through its windows, a couple sharing a cigarette on a stoop and not talking. Normal city things. By the second block, I start to notice the buildings stretch taller, the gaps between them lengthen, and the streetlights start to look noticeably tasteful. I notice a security camera mounted above a gate, discreet enough that most people wouldn't clock it. I file it away and say nothing.
"Are you cold?" George asks.
"No," I say, half a second before I've actually decided.
He doesn't offer his jacket, and I'm grateful, because that would have been awkward. But he shifts almost imperceptibly, positioning himself on my windward side, so his shoulder catches the worst of the breeze. He doesn't comment on it. Something small and inconvenient turns over in my chest.
I think about Gerald at the gala, tilting toward George:Any relation to the Maddox billionaires?George had gone briefly, strangely blank — a glitch I'd covered with the nimble desperation of someone who's done it before.
But the question has followed me onto this street, where the hedges are sculpted into art, and the intercoms on the gates.
I think of the plans for Eleanor's wedding. The flower arrangements that cost more than my rent. The string quartet scheduled to play for three hours without anyone blinking.
It hadn't raised any alarm bells because people go all out for weddings.
But add in Margaret's house, where the kitchen alone swallowed my apartment whole, and I think I missed something big.
Like George is wealthy. Possibly ultra wealthy.
"We're almost there." George says quietly, and I realize I've been silent long enough that he noticed.
"How long have you lived in this neighborhood?" I ask, keeping my voice easy and curious.
"A while," he says.
The townhouse in front of us has tall sash windows, historic brickwork, an iron railing worn smooth in a way that speaks to generations of hands rather than recent renovation.
George pulls a heavy, old fashioned key from his pocket and fits it into the lock like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.
My brain goesoh.
Then the door opens, and I hear a dog welcoming him from somewhere out of sight. Either that or a bomb. Hard to tell.
The dog hits the hallway like a joyful catastrophe. He's large and chaotic with his ears flying, and tail converting his entire back half into a blur.
He finds me immediately and begins circling at speed, and I take an automatic step backward just to avoid being taken out at the knees.
I laugh. A real one, the involuntary kind.
