"Simone."
"I'll stay in the cabin with you until the story runs and the names are in custody. However long that takes. I'll call my editor. I'll tell Marcus. I'll do the whole thing. But I'm not doing it in some apartment with bars on the window and a stranger on the couch."
"That's not a small ask."
"I'm not a small person."
The edge of his mouth does a thing.
"I noticed."
He doesn't touch me.
I want him to touch me.
He doesn't because he's standing in the place where professional ends and something else begins, and he is a man who does not cross that line unless it's been drawn for him in a way he can't misread.
I draw it.
I step forward. One step. Close enough that the front of my cardigan brushes his chest and I have to tilt my head back to keep his eyes.
"I'm not your assignment, Mercer."
"No."
"And I'm not your favor."
"No."
"Then what am I."
He looks at me a long second.
Lifts his hand. Slow. Cups my jaw the way you cup something you already know is going to break if you hold it wrong. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth. Doesn't press. Just rests there.
"A problem I'm going to fail."
"Fail how."
"By not keeping my distance."
"Good."
His thumb moves. Soft. Traces my lower lip. I feel the callus at the base of his thumb exactly the way I felt the weight of his voice last night when he saidcontingency, and my body answers the memory before my brain has time.
A small sound escapes me. Half a breath.
His eyes go darker.
"Not here," he says. Quiet. "Not yet. Marcus is going to walk through that door in three hours, and when he does you and I are going to be two adults having a civil conversation about logistics."
"And after he leaves."
"After he leaves we're going to have a different conversation."
"About what."
He holds my jaw a second longer.
