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“Do you?” I ask.

His eyes meet mine again. “Not completely. I don’t know all the reasons you’re here, but I’m not going to ask you to leave.”

“Good.”

Paul gives a faint, tired smile. “What about me? This place is undecided. Are you going to ask me to leave?”

I freeze for half a second, then force a shrug.

“Not if you clean up after yourself and know how to put the toilet paper on the holder and...”

He laughs, and that stops me. It’s a nice laugh.

“I’ll be tidy,” he says. “And I won’t get in your way, either.”

I glance toward the kitchen, then the hallway, then anywhere that’s not his face.

“So what now?”

Paul takes a breath. “Now, I think we go to our separate bedrooms and wonder what just happened.”

I look back at him. He looks tired. I probably do too.

“I think we’re finally in agreement on something, Paul.”

Chapter twenty

Reset Unset

Paul

Iwake up in an actual bed. That should be a victory.

The room is already bright, sunlight pushing through the gauzy curtains and spreading across the tile floor in soft rectangles. I’m still in yesterday’s clothes. Shoes off, at least. Above the covers, so a little less victorious.

For a few seconds, I lie still and listen to the house. A faint tick somewhere in the wall. Water moving outside.

I sit up too quickly, and my neck objects.

The room looks exactly the way it did when I walked into it last night. Renny’s side of the bed untouched. The nightstand bare except for the catch-all ceramic dish. The closet door closed, and my bags lined up in front of it.

This is supposed to help. Puerto Vallarta in September—too early for most, just right for us—and a ritual maybe I can reclaim.

But not as us. I need to correct that, if I can.

The mission: discover what me looks like waking up here alone, away from the Riverside chaos, away from… both of them.

The water splashes again outside. I stand without deciding.

The patio doors face the pool. Through the sheer curtain, Clint moves under the water in a clean, easy line. One push off the wall. One long stroke. Sunlight breaks over his shoulders when he turns, and the water closes behind him like it wants him back.

He doesn’t see me, and that should make me stop. This isn’t the cam show, open to any viewer with age verification and a credit card. This is Clint in the wild, a man too young, too complicated, and too off-limits for me to watch from behind a curtain.

He reaches the far end and rises, both hands on the edge. Water sheets down his back. His muscles shift as he pushes himself up.

I step away from the curtain so fast my heel catches the rug.

“Enough,” I say to no one.