"I slept through none of it."
He holds my gaze. The challenge in his eyes is the same one he has been throwing since we were thirteen, except the stakes have changed. I hold his gaze back while the flush spreads and my hands tighten around the mug. My neck is hot, my thighs still ache, and I am not going to say a damn word about it in this kitchen at seven in the morning with Dante three feet away and my body still remembering the wall between us.
"I should go get clothes from my apartment," I say. The words come out even. My pulse tells a different story.
"You'll be back," Cole says carefully.
Dante's eyes stay on my face. "Tonight," he says.
The word lands low and certain, a fact he has filed before I confirm it. My stomach dips, and my fingers tighten around the mug because he says it like my return is already measured into his night.
"Yes," I say. "I'll be back tonight."
I take one sip of coffee. The mug is warm in my grip, and my hands stay steady. The rest of me can wait until I am outside.
The walk back to my apartment takes ten minutes through the March cold, and the air leaves every bit of heat trapped under my skin. My bag bumps against my shoulder. My keys bite into my palm. The morning-after kitchen sits behind my ribs with every sound I cannot unfile. Cole called itour kitchen.Dante saidtonight.My body answered both of them before my mouth caught the hell up. The cold stings the skin of my neck where the flush still has not faded, my hands shake in my pockets, and my thighs ache from spending half the night pressed together.
By Monday, I have an excuse to go back.
The heat goes out again. The landlord reschedules. I end up at Elm House in the spare room with the lock turned from the inside. The calls keep coming, first four total, then five, each one the same six seconds of nothing. I delete them. I keep them away from Cole. I keep them away from Dante.
On Wednesday, the filing deadline for the power play piece gives me another excuse. Cole offers the couch for a working session that runs until midnight, and by then it is too cold to walk home. I sleep at Elm House in the spare room with the lock turned from the inside.
Cole asks about the phone that night.
We are on the couch with his laptop on the cushion between us and the film paused mid-frame. His arm stretches along the back of the couch behind my head, close enough that I know the exact distance between his wrist and my hair. My phone buzzes against the armrest, and the flinch goes through me before I can stop it. My shoulders jerk. Cole's hand goes still.
"Maya."
"It's nothing." I pick up the phone and check the screen. Chronicle notification. The 413 is absent from the screen. The flinch already happened, and Cole already filed it.
"That's the third time tonight," he says quietly. "Every time your phone buzzes, you go white around the mouth."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You've been flinching at your phone for weeks and I've been watching it happen and I'm done watching." His voice stays low and level, the Maddox frequency, the tone Richard uses when the conversation has stopped being optional.
I set the phone face-down beside my thigh and press my hands together in my lap.Four in. Four hold. Four out.The count keeps my voice from cracking. It does nothing for the heat crawling up my face.
"There's an area code," I say. "413. Western Massachusetts. Calls started in early March. Six seconds of silence. No voice. I delete them."
Cole's breathing changes. His hand on the back of the couch stays exactly where it is, the quality of its stillness shifting. "How many?"
"Five. Maybe six."
"You know who it is."
"I have a theory."
"Maya." My name carries the weight of thirteen years. "Do you know who it is?"
"I think so. I'm not ready to say the name." My hands press tighter. "Not tonight."
He keeps his mouth shut. He sits there with the film paused and his hand behind my head, and he gives me the one thing I did not ask for out loud. After a minute, his thumb traces the ridge of my neck once, the grounding touch he has been using since we were kids.
"When you're ready," he says.
"When I'm ready."
