"I'm here."
"I need to hear you say it."
"Say what?"
"That you won't. The phone call. The fixer. The family machinery. I need to hear you say you won't."
"I won't." The words grind out. "Not without your permission. Not behind your back."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. The restraint is because you asked. That's the only reason."
"I know. That's why I'm thanking you."
She pushes off the doorframe and crosses the kitchen until she's in front of me. Close. Inside the perimeter she maintains with everyone. Six months of watching her enforce that invisible boundary, and now her toes are inches from mine.
"I'm tired," she says. The locks, the counts, the breathing exercises, the three weeks of an envelope in her bag and a dead name in a zippered compartment all sit under the word.
"I know," I say.
"I don't want to think about him tonight. I don't want to think about the letter or the calls or what Richard will say." She pauses. Her eyes drop to my mouth, then to my chest beneath her hand. "Tonight I want to stop thinking."
Her palm finds my chest, flat over my heart.
"Make me stop thinking," she says.
Her palm stays there, and my grip clamps around the counter edge behind me until the granite bites into my fingers. My heartbeat hits her palm too hard, too fast, and the counter edge digs deeper into my skin while Cole watches us from the table.
I look at Cole. He's already looking at me, already rising from the chair. Slower than he would have yesterday. Less certain. No words.
Covering her hand with mine, I press it harder against my heartbeat.
"Upstairs," I say, my voice low. "Both of you."
Upstairs, in my bedroom, her coat is left downstairs. Gray sheets. The lamp on the nightstand casting low amber. The corners stay dark.
Maya stands at the foot of the bed. Cole is beside her. I'm in the doorway.
"Rules," I say.
"Your rules or mine?" The challenge in her voice is sharp. This Maya has opened an envelope and read her father's words aloud in a kitchen and walked into this room with her hand on my chest. She holds my stare and waits.
"Mine. Unless you overrule them. You can overrule anything I say. The word is stop."
"Everything stops. I remember." She pulls her sweater over her head in one motion, and the shirt underneath rides up. She pulls that off too, standing at the foot of my bed in a bra and jeans. "What else?"
"Cole," I say without looking away from her.
He steps behind her, chest to her back, and his hands find her hips with a hesitation I would not have felt yesterday. Maya's breath catches. She leans into him before her mind can drag the surrender back, and his mouth lowers to her neck while his fingers settle carefully over the denim.
She tilts her head and gives him access. Her eyes stay on me.
"You're watching," she says.
"I'm always watching."
"How does it feel?"
