Too fast.
“Stay where you are,” he murmurs, already moving toward the entryway with tension in his shoulders that twists my stomach.
I scoop up the blanket that started my self-expedition, my breath restricted, when he tugs on his trousers, then approaches the door, each step calculated. When he leans toward the peephole, every muscle in his body tightens. His spine straightens as something dark and heavy falls over him.
I can’t see his face, but I know whoever he’s about to converse with brings bad news.
His shoulders slump so fast that I feel its draft against my skin, and tension radiates off him in invisible waves. It fills the room and presses against my chest until it’s wedged next to my heart.
Even though I tell myself not to overthink it, my pulse stutters when he stores his gun in the back of his trousers and his hand lowers to the door handle. He opens the door enough to speak through, but not enough for me to see who’s standing there.
I don’t require seeing them to understand the situation. Dante’s low, clipped tone, which I’ve never heard before, reveals everything.
His caller knocked on the wrong apartment. They wanted 12A, not 12B.
“How did you get this address? And why the hell do you think it’s appropriate to show up at this hour?”
I can’t hear the reply. The voice coming through is too soft and muffled. But whatever they say causes Dante to still. His anger doesn’t fade, but something else slips beneath it, something that feels an awful lot like guilt.
When he glances back at me, I snap my gaze away and pretend I’m not terrified of what has made him so panicked.
A moment of silence lingers between us, tense and delicate. Then he says, “Cici.” My nickname sounds starkly different on his tongue now compared to how it sounded earlier. It’s tired and apologetic. “I know you’re not rostered on for tonight, but can you watch Camille for me?” His tone is professional, but portions of unease create hairline cracks in the armor he’s endeavoring to resurrect. “Something urgent has come up, and I can’t leave it until the morning.”
I hesitate in replying. Giving him permission to walk out the door, even when every part of me wants to ask him to stay, is hard, but I nod anyway since it’s the right thing to do.
He briefly closes his eyes, exposing the exhaustion behind them, then twists back to face the interrupter.
“Wait outside,” he tells the person on the other side, his voice commanding.
When he closes the door, the walls slowly close in on me. Whatever is happening will pull him away from me in a way I’m not ready for and incapable of stopping.
I’m certain of it.
Mechanically, Dante collects the three bundles of money we’ve been serving back and forth for the past week from the chipped kitchenette counter. He places them at the foot of the mattress withoutacknowledging how my pulse flutters when their drop infiltrates the air with his cologne.
He delivers them as he’s done each night for the past seven days, then heads for the exit.
“Thank you for agreeing to watch Camille,” he says before he breaks through the threshold. “You will be well compensated.”
My reply tumbles out too fast, desperate and raw. “I don’t want your money.”
Dante freezes halfway out the door, his knuckles white as he grips the doorframe. I expect a brutish reply similar to what he gave in the diner last week, but he’s already shut down the fragile moment that might have existed between us if he had chosen me over the person outside.
He nods once, then leaves, the door slamming shut behind him.
My head screams at me not to follow. I don’t need to lower myself to his standards by snooping to unearth what he’s hiding, but my heart doesn’t listen.
Faster than a flash of lightning, I cross the apartment on shaky legs and peer through the peephole.
What I see knocks the air from my lungs.
Dante’s broad shoulders fold in as his hands slip beneath a woman collapsed on the floor. I can’t see her face curtained by dark hair, but when her lithe body melds into Dante’s, my stomach clenches.
He gathers her into his arms with a gentleness that feels both practiced and instinctive and then carries her toward the elevator the way a groom carries a bride across a threshold.
My throat dries as a million scenarios run through my head.
None of them are good.
