“I need to talk to you,” I said. “Not in here. A walk.”
She didn’t answer right away. She sipped the coffee, then set it down, then looked past me, out at the river, not at me. “Why outside?”
The question was a test, so I answered it like one.
“What I have to say is easier in the open.”
She raised an eyebrow, just a fraction, like she was calculating the odds of this being a line. “You want to get rid of me. Drop me in the river. Concrete overcoat?”
“If I wanted you gone,” I said, “I wouldn’t waste good coffee on you.”
That got a noise from her. Not quite a laugh. Something closer to a grudging respect. She put the mug down. “Let’s go, then.”
I reached for my coat. She put hers on in the entryway, zipped it to the neck, hands deep in the pockets. She watched me as I laced my boots, not directly, just through the mirror on the closet door. Her reflection was all angles—cheekbones, jaw, the hard planes under the softness of her skin.
We went out without another word. The lobby was empty except for the doorman, who nodded at us with the careful indifference of a man who saw too much and never talked about it. The city outside was awake now, but only just—delivery truckson the side streets, a jogger on the path, some asshole yelling at his phone in a parking lot.
We walked in silence for a block. Two. The river to our left, the city to our right, the only sound the echo of our own steps on the cold cement.
She broke first.
“So,” she said, “What is this? The talk where you tell me you’re married? Or that you’re actually with the CIA? Or that last night was a bet, and your brother owes you fifty bucks?”
I liked the dry humor. I let it ride for a second before I answered.
“No marriage. No CIA. No bets.”
She glanced at me. “Then what?”
“I’ve been thinking. There’s something between us. If I try to deny it, it won’t work. It will come out, maybe in a way we won’t like. So I want to take control. I want to lay out the terms,” I said. “Of this. Of us.”
She made a noise in her throat. Not quite a laugh, not quite a choke. “You rehearsed that, didn’t you?”
“About a hundred fucking times.”
She nodded, like that made sense.
“Fine,” she said. “But I need another coffee first. I still feel like I’m asleep.”
We looped back, grabbed coffees from the café on the next block. She didn’t even look at the menu, just said “black” and waited. I paid. She let me.
We stood under the awning, coffee cups steaming in the cold.
She looked up at me, eyes clear now, the analyst back at work. “You’re not going to say sorry, are you? Please don’t apologize for last night. I don’t want it. I don’t want you to be noble and stoic and shit.”
“That’s not what this is about. The whole point is I’m not sorry. Not even a little bit.”
“Good.”
We stood there a minute, drinking, watching a gull pick through a trash can.
She drained the cup. Threw it away. Then she squared her shoulders and said, “I’m ready.”
The park was empty. Three blocks from the safe house, a little green square carved into the city grid, ringed with sycamores and bare now, snow packed to a crust over the grass. In the middle was a fountain, dry and frozen, the basin rimmed with cigarette butts from last summer.
We walked the perimeter, then I steered her, gentle, toward a bench with a view of the fountain.
She sat at one end, knees together, arms braced on her thighs. I sat on the other, my hands in my pockets. We didn’t turn to face each other.
