Page 92 of The Silent Hour

"And what did you say?"

"I told her the boundaries had shifted. That if you ever suspected something between us—" He paused, swallowed. "I made it clear there was nothing there."

"Was there?"

"Julia." His hands tightened on my hips, not possessive—pleading. "No. There wasn't. There isn't. I know I should never have let her near me."

I believed him. That was the maddening part. I believed every syllable, and still the ache refused to dissolve, and my intuition was not satisfied. I set the envelope back on the desk with deliberate care, aligning its edge with the blotter.

"If I could let her go, I would, but we still don't know what Cortez wants with her, and if she's innocent, if she's just a woman who got caught in the crossfire of her father's bullshit, then destroying her career because of a mistake she regrets would make me the kind of man I don't want to be."

“A mistake she regrets? Was she crying?" I asked quietly.

He blinked, caught off guard by the question. "What?"

"When she apologized. Was she crying?"

A flicker of something—guilt, maybe, or recognition—crossed his face. "No. She was steady. Composed and professional."

I absorbed that, turning it over like a stone in my palm. Composed was worse than tears. Tears were reactive. Composed could be rehearsed, but I wasn’t going to share that with Ethan.

"Okay," I said.

He studied me, his dark eyes searching mine for the anger he expected, or the accusation he'd braced for. I gave him neither despite wanting to choke and shake some damn sense into him.

"Okay?" he repeated.

"I'm not going to scream at you for talking to her, Ethan. You're right, we need to know what Cortez is doing, and she's the only line we have for him that isn't behind prison glass."

Relief softened the tension in his shoulders, and his thumbs resumed their slow circles against my hips.

I hated how quickly his body responded to permission, as if I'd handed him a reprieve instead of a piece of myself, he'd already chipped away.

"I need you to hear something."

His brow lifted. "Go ahead."

"She didn't kiss you because she was drunk. Drunk people stumble, they slur, they say things they shouldn't. They don't calculate when to cross a line."

His mouth opened, then closed. I watched him reassemble the argument he had in response. "Lia—"

"Let me finish." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "She didn't kiss you because you were tired. She didn't kiss you because the door was open. She kissed you because she wanted to, and she chose the exact moment when you were both most vulnerable to do it."

Something shifted behind his eyes, not disagreement, but the uncomfortable recognition of a fact he hadn't wanted to examine.

"I'm not saying she's evil, but she's not a helpless damsel either and every time you tell me about her—the apology, the professionalism, the boundaries—you're describing a woman who knows exactly what she's doing."

He was quiet for a long moment, his gaze dropping to where his hands rested against my hips. "You think I'm defending her."

"Are you?"

"No." His answer came fast, almost too fast. "I'm telling you what happened because you deserve to know."

"I do deserve to know, and I appreciate that you're telling me." I pressed my palm flat against his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heart beneath the fabric. "But every time Lila's name comes up, you have an explanation ready. She's upset about her father. She's drunk. She's remorseful. She's professional. She's innocent until proven otherwise. And every single one of those explanations is reasonable enough that I can't argue with any of them individually."

His jaw tightened. "That's because they're true."

"Maybe they are." I held his gaze. "But when you string them all together, it sounds like you're building a case for her."