Page 46 of The Dangerous Dance

His heart is loud under my ear. The wool of the couch is rough against my bare thigh where the skirt has ridden up. His shirt is still open and pressed against my cheek. The flat smells like coffee from the kitchen and outside a car door closes and further away a siren begins and grows and fades.

I close my eyes.

I let him hold me.

Afterward, the flat is the same flat and the car park is still visible through the window and the yellow security light is still on in the flat grey daylight, and I am sitting on the floor with my back against the couch again — the position that seems to be where I end up in this room — and he is beside me this time rather than above me on the couch.

His shoulder is against mine.

"I need to go back to the apartment," I say. "Not because I want to leave. Because I've been dark to Viktor for five days and if it goes to six he's going to send someone to the Astoria building to check the signal in person, and whoever he sends will be better than the man you hired."

"I know," he says.

"And I need to contact Dara. She's been⁠—"

"I know."

"I'm not running," I say. "I want to be clear about that."

"I know that too." He is quiet for a moment. "Come back tomorrow."

"That's not a sustainable arrangement."

"It doesn't have to be sustainable yet," he says. "It has to work for tomorrow."

I look at the car park. The yellow light. A pigeon doing something purposeful near the far wall.

"Tomorrow," I say.

He turns his head and looks at me in the specific way he has of looking at things he's decided to let himself look at. "Tomorrow."

I get up. I collect my coat and my bag and the burner from the drawer I put it in three days ago. He stays on the floor and watches me and doesn't offer to drive me, which I didn't ask for, and I don't ask for it.

At the door I stop.

"Liam," I say.

He looks at me.

"I meant the please," I say.

He is quiet for a moment. Then: "I know you did."

I go down the stairs and out into the cold and walk three blocks before I call Dara, who answers on the second ring.

"Are you alive," she says.

"Yes."

"Are you all right."

I think about the question. About what all right means when you've just made several decisions you can't take back in a flat above a laundromat with a man who kept the window unlatched.

"I think so," I say.

"That's not the same as yes."

"No," I agree. "But it's more than I had a week ago."