Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“There,” she breathes.
“Yeah,” I manage.
But eventually the unhurried quality gives way to a deeper and more insistent need. The pace builds between us until her nails find my back and her legs lock around me and then she’s falling. I follow her over the edge with my face pressed into her hair and her name in my throat. I hold her closer than I need.
Afterward she lies with her cheek against my chest, one hand flat over my heart, her breathing slow and even. I have my arm around her, my hand tracing the same slow path up and down her back that I’ve traced hundreds upon hundreds of times before.
“Cole,” she says into the dark.
“Mmm.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been difficult about being here.”
I look down at her, though I can’t see much in the low light. “You haven’t been difficult. You’ve been caged and I’m not so boneheaded that I don’t know the difference.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “It won’t be much longer,” she says, and I realize she’s saying it to bolster herself. Reminding herself that the finish line exists.
“No,” I agree. “It won’t.”
Her hand presses flat against my chest, feeling my heartbeat. She tilts her head up and kisses the underside of my jaw, soft and brief.
And within ten minutes she’s asleep, breathing deep and even against my shoulder, her hand still resting over my heart like maybe she’s protecting it.
I stay awake longer than she does, the way I always do, watching the city lights shift on the ceiling.
Be patient, I told her. Soon this will all be done.
I have to believe that.
Because the alternative—that it isn’t over soon, that it gets worse before it gets better, that I could still lose her to this—is a worry I’ve filed away in a deep place I don’t want to look at.
I press my lips to the top of her head and close my eyes.
CHAPTER 19
Tessa
The article is finished. It’s been done for approximately fourteen hours and twenty minutes, and in that time I have refreshed my email forty-three times waiting for Simon to tell me it’s a go. I’ve also reorganized Erik’s notebook entries into a third consecutive spreadsheet that Josie doesn’t need, eaten an entire sleeve of crackers standing over the kitchen island, and stared out the lobby windows at Occidental Square long enough that I’ve memorized the walking patterns of three different pigeons.
The pigeons, notably, can leave whenever they want.
I emailed the article to my editor at nine seventeen yesterday morning. Simon confirmed receipt at nine forty-two with a single line. Got it, will be in touch.
That’s editor-speak for Don’t call me, I’ll call you, and could mean anything from two days to a week depending on what else is burning on his desk. Simultaneously, the legal team will review it and the fact-checkers will go through every claim. There will be questions and clarifications and probably at least one conversation about liability that will make me want to put my head through a wall.
All of which is normal. All of which I understand intellectually. All of which requires me to sit here and wait, and I have never been good at waiting.
Cole left at seven this morning. Another client situation that Malik briefed the team on last night after dinner while I sat at the far end of the table pretending to read but actually listening to every word. Something about a tech executive in Bellevue whose business partner had made some dangerous friends. Cole and two other agents were out the door before the city was fully awake, moving with purpose and direction, while I stayed here and watched the pigeons.
Yeah… I’m a little more bitter today than I was yesterday, and twice as bitter as I was the day before that.
I push away from the lobby desk where I’ve been sitting for the better part of the morning and stand, rolling my shoulders. The restlessness has been building for six days now to an almost fevered crescendo.
I need air. I need movement. I need to go somewhere that isn’t this building because even the rooftop has been deemed too dangerous for me to go sit on—snipers and not worth the risk, blah blah. I would kill to get outside, even for an hour, even for twenty minutes, just to remember what it feels like to choose a direction and walk in it. Hell, I’d be good if they’d just open the lobby door and let me stick my nose outside to breathe in the city.
Footsteps on the reclaimed timber staircase have me turning to see Reid coming down from the second floor with an unhurried ease. He’s got a protein bar in one hand and his phone in the other. He’s in workout clothes, hair still damp from the gym, looking insufferably unburdened.
“Hi, Reid,” I say brightly, standing from my chair.