"That's not very comforting."
"No," I agree. "It isn't."
She nods. "Are you scared of him?"
The question catches me. No one asks me that. The assumption, always, is that I'm the one who scares other people.
"I'm careful of him," I say. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
I think about it honestly. "Sometimes."
She holds that. Then she slides off the desk. "Take me home."
I let a driver take us and slide into the back seat next to Wren. Then I tell her.
"I'm moving in."
She looks at me. One eyebrow up.
"With you. To the penthouse. I'm moving in."
"You bought me that penthouse."
"I did. And now I'm living in it. With you."
"Did you ask me?"
"No." I glance at her. "I'm telling you."
Her eyebrows practically go through her hairline. I smile, searching that teasing grin on her face, and I reach across, sweeping up her hands in mine, planting a soft kiss on one.
“Wren Ayton. Can I please move in with you?”
She's quiet for three seconds. Then she smiles — the real one, surprised out of her, nothing performed about it.
"Okay," she says.
"Okay?"
"Don't make me take it back."
At the penthouse, she unpacks the suitcase.
I watch from the doorway. Don't offer to help. This is hers — her ritual, her closing of something she's held open for five years. The escape hatch she never quite let herself seal. I'm not going to make it easier or faster. This belongs to her.
She kneels on the bedroom floor and unzips it and starts pulling things out, setting each thing down like she's taking inventory of a life she's finally deciding to keep.
The jacket with the deep pockets comes out first — she holds it for a moment before setting it aside. A few soft t-shirts. A book with a spine so soft it falls open on its own. A second pair of jeans, almost identical to the first. A washbag. A small tin I don't recognize — the kind that might hold aspirin or mints.
Each object placed on the floor with the same deliberateness. I watch her hands do the work. The left hand, sure and practiced. The right, working around the brace with accommodations she's already made automatic. I have watched her adapt so quietly to what the injury costs her that I've almost stopped seeing it.
Almost.
"I'm going to buy you more things," I say.
She pauses. Looks up at me.
