Page 72 of Wells

"Have dinner with me. A real one. I'll pick you up at six thirty."

Not the office. Not a working dinner with the Rotterdam file open between us. Not a contrived work trip and room service.

"Okay," I say, and I hear the smile in my own voice and don't bother hiding it.

"Good. I'm looking forward to it."

The line goes quiet. I stand on the sidewalk with the phone still warm against my ear and the sun in my eyes, and for the first time since the screen stayed black on Thursday, I don't feel like something everyone is walking away from.

Through the café window, Cas is watching me, that easy, familiar smile on his face, like he's already decided this was the start of something.

It's not.

I push the door open just far enough to grab my dry cleaning off the seat and toss out a ten. "I've got to run. This was fun, Cas. Take care of yourself."

I don't wait for his face. I'm already gone, the plastic crinkling against my chest, my mind three steps ahead of me, at six thirty, in whatever Wells Stone has planned.

EIGHTEEN

Wells

Carne Vale: Carnival takes its name from carne vale, a farewell to the flesh, a last indulgence chosen in full knowledge of the fast to come. He says goodbye to one self and keeps the other, calling the silence a mercy.

She still thinks Midnight is a stranger on a black screen who paid for access, asked for exclusivity, and failed to show up for his Thursday call. A business arrangement that closed.

I can make that sound almost noble if I keep the language clean enough.

I didn't log on because continuing would have been reckless. I didn't message her to let her know because anything I said as Midnight is now tainted. I kept the payment scheduled because I made an agreement, and I always follow through.

All of that is true enough to use, but none of it is the whole truth.

The whole truth is that I sat at my desk Thursday night with my hand on the mouse and the login page open.

The cursor waited, and so did she. I knew she was there, ready for me, and I still didn't click.

Not because I had stopped wanting Peoria. That would have been easier. I didn't click because the second I pictured the call connecting, everything came apart in my head.

After that, all I could see was Cera.

Cera at her desk outside my office with coffee beside her keyboard. Cera in Conference Room two, pushing back like she wouldn't be intimidated. Cera on a balcony in Tampa, watching me through the smoke and asking questions no one else in my life ever dared to ask.

The discovery should have killed it. That was the rule I trusted because it had worked before. Years ago, I traced a woman who had gotten too close, and once the mystery became a name, an address, and a face, whatever had hooked me went cold. The chase had been the point, and the woman had only been the shape it took.

Peoria should have gone the same way, but knowing turned every memory inside out and only made me want her more.

Every memory I have of Peoria now carries Cera beneath it. Every moment I spent with Cera in my office, on the plane or in that hotel room is now shadowed by what I know, that she's the woman who told Midnight about counting cars on a roof before she was old enough to know loneliness had a name.

The black screen doesn't protect me anymore. It doesn't enhance the fantasy. It only makes me aware of how I'd rather touch her, feel her, than jerk off to a caricature of her.

I thought Friday would be easier after that. I had made the clean decision. Midnight was done, Peoria could stay behind the screen, and Cera could stay where she belonged, three feet down the hall and safely out of reach.

That lasted until I saw her.

She looked up when I passed her desk, and every useful thought I had built around distance went useless. There was no mask, no wig, no red lipstick. There was only Cera, looking at me with those brown eyes and no idea I had heard her breathe herself to sleep.

The answer to that secondary problem came before lunch. I could transfer her, move her under someone else, put a wall of policy between us, and call it leadership.

She has more than earned her place at Stone Intermodal, and that is the reason I would give if anyone asked. It's even true. She makes the dissemination of my work better, there is no denying that.