“I’m sitting here.”
“You’re sitting herestudiously.” He glances up, green eyes sharp under the easy expression. “It’s unsettling. Stop.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“Mm.” He deals the next hand. Two cards each, sliding them across the low table. “You ever actually turn it off? The noticing?”
I pick up my cards. A queen and a ten. I keep my eyes very still. “Not really.”
“Must be exhausting.”
“You get used to it.”
He studies me for a moment—and there it is again, that flicker underneath, the thing that isn’t mischief—and then his phone buzzes on the table between us.
He glances at the screen, and something in his face changes. Not dramatically. Ian doesn’t do dramatic. But the ease drains out of him the way heat leaves a room when a window opens.
He picks up the phone and stands in one motion, turning slightly away from me.
“Talk,” he barks into the receiver.
I watch his back, the set of his shoulders, the way his free hand drops to his side and closes into a tight fist.
“How bad?”
A pause. His head drops forward an inch.
“Get him here now. No, I can’t leave her.” A beat. “I know it’s a fucking emergency, but I can’t fucking leave her. So get him here now.”
He hangs up and stands there for a second with his back to me.
When he turns around, his expression is controlled in a way it wasn’t before—the kind of controlled that takes effort.
“Ian.” My voice comes out quieter than I intend. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing you need to?—”
“Is it Reth?” I uncurl from the couch. “Is he in trouble?”
Something crosses his face. Not confirmation, exactly, more like he’s decided how much rope to give me.
“Yeah.” He sets his phone down on the windowsill and looks out at the driveway. “You could say that.”
“Then go.” I stand up fully. “Go help him. I’ll be fine here.”
Ian turns, and the expression on his face stops me. So much conflict, raw and barely contained. It’s the look of a man being pulled in two directions at once and hating both of them.
“I can’t do that,” he says. Quiet. Final.
“Ian, if he’s hurt?—”
“Sophia.” My name’s in his mouth like a full stop. “You don’t understand. When Reth told me to keep you safe—” He pauses, choosing, and what he settles on is careful and exact. “It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t him being an ass. It was the one thing in the world he was sure about.” His jaw shifts. “I leave you, I’m not just breaking a promise. I’m breaking the only thing he’s ever asked of me.”
“And what’s that?”
“Protecting you when he can’t.”
The room goes quiet, and I look at him while something inside me shifts toward a shape I don’t recognize.
