I know all about what happened back home and why she ran with her sister and nephew. But I don’t know what happened once she got here and what may have caused her to leave her house.
Maybe I misunderstood what I saw last week. The way she brushed her teeth and hair in the diner parking lot before her shift, like she’d slept in her car.
My focus stays on her as she whispers with her friend, probably about the incident with Ben.
Lev keeps watching her too. His gaze tracks her movements, his fingers tightening around mine, like he’s checking whether I’m seeing what he’s seeing. If she’s okay.
But I don’t know the answer. Not yet.
I can’t stop wondering where she goes at night. Who she goes home to. If she even has a home at all.
And if she doesn’t, I need to know why. I need to help her. I would put my men on her, but if she notices and gets scared, she might do something reckless and desperate.
That leaves me, even though I haven’t had a second to spare. Lev’s nanny quit last week and flew back to Russia due to a family emergency, and he refuses anyone new. Between therapy appointments, work, and my son needing me, everything else has been pushed aside.
But I’ll have to make time. Lev would want me to.
She comes back a few minutes later, balancing a tray. A burger slides in front of me, followed by a basket she sets carefully in front of Lev.
“Chicken nuggets,” she says to him. “And curly fries. I made sure they added extra, like always.”
Lev’s mouth trembles first, the way it does when he’s deciding whether a feeling is safe enough to show. Then it curves into a small smile. Again. And it does something to me to see him this way with her. He reaches for his backpack as she starts to go.
“Wait,” he says, barely louder than a breath.
She turns back to him just as he pulls out a piece of paper, being careful with the edges, and holds it up between them.
My gaze fastens on it. He drew something, and it’s good. Drawing is how he makes sense of the world when words don’t come, how he takes what’s too big in his head and puts it somewhere his hands can control.
Three figures stretch across the page. A strip of sand. A sun in the corner. A woman in a yellow swimsuit with a big hat, kneeling near the waterline. Lev is beside her, focused on a castle, and I’m in the background stretched out on a chair, watching them.
Her name is written above the woman in careful, uneven letters.
Sloane.
Her breath catches, and those hazel eyes shimmer as she looks between the picture and my son. “Is that…us?”
Lev nods.
She swallows, then grins at him. “It’s beautiful. Thank you so much. I’m going to put it on my fridge.”
Does she even have a fridge right now?
She turns back to Lev, voice thick. “You’re really special. Your dad is very lucky.”
My jaw tightens. “I am.”
Her eyes flick to mine, and my gaze stays locked on her, on the way her fingers curl around the paper like it’s something precious. There’s a crack in her, a fracture she keeps hidden beneath politeness and smiles.
Something in her is breaking. And I will be the one to fix it.
CHAPTER FOUR
SLOANE
The house looksthe same when I arrive the next day, hoping to catch a glimpse of him before my shift. I hesitate only a second before knocking, already knowing how this will go, but I do it anyway. My pulse beats hard in my ears as I wait, then knock again, praying she lets me see him this time.
Just as I’m about to try again, the door opens just enough for her face to appear, eyes narrowed and already annoyed like I’ve interrupted something important just by existing.
