Reth doesn’t break stride.
“Of course I’m lying. I’m making enough for three,” Ian calls after us. “Obviously. I’m not a monster.” A beat. “Unlike some people in this house.”
I glance back at him over my shoulder and find him looking our way, the corner of his mouth doing something. “You showing her?”
Reth’s thumb moves over my pulse-point again, and I hear Ian say to no one, “About bloody time.”
We turn a corner, and another, into a hallway I’ve never explored. The ceiling is higher, the walls bare, with that distinct newly-built look, like it hasn’t had the time to be lived in yet.
He stops in front of a set of double doors—dark wood, tall structure. They’re enormous. The kind of doors that imply something serious on the other side.
“If there’s another woman being held prisoner behind those doors, I’m going to need you to walk me back to the kitchen so I can borrow Ian’s steak knife.”
Reth pauses, glancing at me from the side, his eyes narrowed like he’s not amused.
I shrug. “What? I kinda like that I’m the only one whose privacy you invaded.”
There’s this slight crease between his brows.
I wrinkle my nose. “Too soon?”
There’s a loud click of a lock, and it echoes against the wall, spiking my heart rate.
Without saying a word, he pushes the doors open and steps back, waiting for me to go in first. For a second, I envision a room full of filing cabinets and surveillance equipment and seventeen monitors showing live feeds of my old apartment, which, honestly, at this point would be on brand.
There’s this moment where I’m holding my breath as I slowly walk through the doors, Reth close behind. Really close.
Inside, the room unfolds around me like a dream. My eyes register everything at once, but my brain lags several steps behind. Color, light, the specific quality of two completely different kinds of beautiful existing in the same space at the same time.
Paris on one side.
Japan on the other.
Night and morning. Gold and navy, pale pink and light blue. It’s the dark shimmer of a river and the soft scatter of petals. Both of them surrounding me, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, wrapping around the room like the world folded in half and somehow didn’t tear.
“Reth, what is this?”
Hard muscle presses against my back, voice low against my ear. “December thirtieth, twenty-twenty-one.”
I still.
“Made a list tonight, of places I want to eat before I die.”
I swallow, recognizing the words.Mywords.
“Got through two,” he continues, “and then stopped because the two felt complete somehow, like they said everything the list was trying to say.”
A finger touches the small of my back, slowly tracking up my spine as he continues, each line punctuated by the heat of his breath on my skin. “Breakfast at Takada Castle Site Park during cherry blossom season.”
He turns me gently, guiding my gaze to the cherry blossoms exploding across one wall, branches curling onto the ceiling, pale pink bleeding into deeper blush, and rising through the petals—Takada Castle. Not imposing. Not dramatic. Just there, the way it actually is, a three-storied turret rising quietly through the blossoms.
“Dinner in Paris.” Reth’s fingers pause just below the nape of my neck, curling into the hair there. “By the Eiffel Tower.Actuallyby it. Close enough you have to tip your head back to see the top.”
He tugs my hair, a sharp snap that steals my breath, and I look up—the painted tip of the tower rising through the ceiling in bold gold and black strokes against a midnight sky, iron lacework rendered in paint so precise it feels real.
My pulse stutters. “Reth…”
“I keep thinking about those two specifically.” Lips brush the side of my neck, mask gone. “They’re complete opposites, and I think that’s exactly it.”
