Page 6 of The Silent Hour

The bathroom door was only a few steps away. Beyond it, a shower, a toothbrush, and the chance to feel like a person again. My stomach cramped at the smell still drifting from the tray, something warm with butter—though my throat still tasted like rum and a series of decisions I wasn't ready to examine.

When I glanced back at Ethan, he was still watching me.

His expression gave away nothing—jaw set, arms still folded, mouth a flat, unreadable line—but his eyes had shifted. Softened, barely.

"Are you sure you don't want me to get out of your hair?" I asked, aiming for breezy “I can drag Toya out of bed. We'll disappear, and you can go back to being whatever you are."

His lips twitched at the corner—just barely. For a heartbeat I thought he'd let it ride, keep things easy and surface-level, but then something shifted in his face. The careful, composed thing he'd been wearing all morning just fell away.

"I think I might like it if you stay with me. Forever."

"Oh... wow." I managed a half-smile, buying time. "Didn't know real men actually said things like that out loud."

"As opposed to?" His voice was easy, unhurried, but his eyes didn't move off mine.

Monster mate smut, I thought. Any fictional man worth remembering. My brain supplied this helpfully, like a footnote.

I smiled while something warm and traitorous turned over in my chest. Then I turned and shuffled toward the bathroom before I did something truly stupid like believe him.

PEOPLE LIKE TO SAY forever is built brick by brick, each year mortared neatly to the last until you have something solid enough to weather any storm, a house of years with strong foundations and clean lines.

For me, it took one day.

One day to feel the weight of a promise I never asked for.

That morning, I thought I’d brush my teeth, choke down whatever food he put in front of me, and find the fastest way back to my apartment with Latoya in tow. Instead, I stayed. I stayed because he made it easy, and my gut was telling me that whatever this was, go with it. I had never been steered wrong by intuition before, I wasn’t going to ignore it now.

I still attempted, and failed, to wake my best friend from the trenches of her hangover slumber, but Ethan assured me it was okay to let her sleep. He'd brought me clothes, too. Not the cocktail dress he promised I had changed out of myself, which was now being laundered by him, my gracious host.

In the meantime, I got to dress in a pair of soft gym shorts and a loose linen shirt that hung off one shoulder when I pulled it on. The shorts were way too long, so I rolled them a few times. The shirt I didn’t mind even if the outfit as a whole made me look like a teenager playing dress-up in her father's closet.

I didn't care. I was clean, fed, and my teeth no longer felt like they'd grown fur overnight. Now I’d settled comfortably in his kitchen and was nosily taking it all in.

"So, you know Mehgan's fiancé?"

"Troy? Yeah." He leaned against the counter; a coffee mug held loose in one hand. "We went to school together."

“College?” I asked.

“Nah. That took us two different directions. I studied law.”

I eyed him. “You’re a lawyer?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

"I'm not surprised," I replied, though I was. Not about the law degree, I could buy that. It was the rest of him. The forearms, the ink, and the way he carried himself like someone who'd never needed a business card to open a door. "It's just, no lawyers I know look like you."

He grinned, slow and amused. "Know a lot of those?"

"Might be surprised,” I replied lightly.

"Try me."

I considered him over the edge of the water glass he’d given me. The truth was, I did know lawyers, and not just because my current building had three. The one on the fifth floor wore a mustard cardigan and talked about his cats' birthdays in the elevator.

The woman on twelve had a perm that could stop traffic and a severe case of resting bitch face.

None of them looked like they'd stepped off a magazine cover.