"And I can't keep waiting for you to decide if I'm worth the risk."
He closed his eyes briefly. "You are. That's the problem."
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
"So what happens now?" I said.
He looked at me squarely. "I think I need to figure some things out."
I nodded. I'd known that was coming. Knowing didn't make it land any softer. "Then figure them out."
"Nadia—"
"If you're going to run, then run. But do it now. Don't drag it out."
"There's something else." His words came quickly. I stopped with my hand on the door. "Malakai called the night of the Peterson event. There's footage from the venue kitchen. Someone was in there Saturday afternoon, but the file's too big to send. He needs us both to come in and view it."
I turned back slowly. "He called on the night of the event."
"Yes."
"That was four days ago, Daemon."
He said nothing.
I stood there and let that sit, right alongside everything else. Four days. While I'd been giving him space and running my business and not following up on a deliberate act of sabotage against my company, the footage had been sitting in Malakai's office waiting for a conversation Daemon couldn't bring himself to start.
"He doesn't know who it is?" I said.
"Not yet."
I'd been so tangled up in the mess between us that I'd dropped the ball on the sabotage. Hadn't followed up the way I should have. My business had been deliberately targeted, and I'd let it slide because I was too busy waiting on a man who couldn't decide if he wanted to stay. That made me angrier than anything else.
"Text me the time," I said.
"Nadia—"
"Strictly business, Daemon."
He said nothing.
I nodded once. Opened the door. Stepped out into Sofia's garden, where the roses were coming up and the morning air was cool and clean and entirely indifferent to the fact that I'd just walked out of something I hadn't wanted to leave.
I made it to my van. Got in. Closed the door.
Sat there with both hands on the wheel and my eyes fixed on the windshield while I reminded myself how to breathe.
Then I started the engine and drove away.
I had a business to run. Vendors to call. A collective to launch and a corporation to fight and parents who needed me and a sister's kids who called me every Sunday.
I had all of that.
I didn't let myself cry until I was three blocks away.
I had a business luncheon that afternoon. I knew that because it was on the schedule, and because the schedule was the thing I fell back on when everything else stopped making sense.
The Army had taught me that. When you're running on nothing, you run on the schedule. Complete the task. Don't stop moving until the mission is done.
