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Inside, the room is quiet in a new way.

No longer empty with two people inside of it.

She painted me without meaning to.

She followed me home to make me talk.

She kissed me like she was just as done with restraint as I was.

And now she's curled against my side like she trusts me with more than I deserve.

This is the problem with finally getting what you want.

You don't feel calmer after.

You feel more terrified.

Because now there's something real to lose.

Chapter Nineteen

ARIA

The morning after sleeping with your contract husband is, apparently, an exercise in selective amnesia.

Everett is already in the kitchen when I come downstairs. Board shorts with coffee made and his phone already in his hand. His hair still damp from a shower I didn’t hear him take, which means he was up before the sun again, swimming or working or doing whatever it is he does when his brain won’t let him stay in bed beside me.

He glances up.

"Morning."

One word. Delivered with the same distance he’d use to greet someone he didn’t have naked against a wall hours ago.

"Morning," I say back.

Neither of us mentions last night.

Or the pool.

Or the bedroom.

Or the fact that at some point around two in the morning I woke up half on top of him with his arm locked around my waist like he was keeping me from leaving, which for the record, I was not trying to do.

I pour coffee and focus very hard on not looking at his hands.

His hands that were… no.

Coffee. Focus. Do not think about this morning and his very gifted hands.

He’s not ignoring me, exactly. He’s moving around the kitchen like a man who has decided that proximity is manageable as long as no one acknowledges what happened in it.

I know this version of Everett. This is the one who builds walls out of routine. Coffee at this temperature. Reports assembled in this order.

I open the pastry box that was delivered this morning and start arranging croissants on a plate like this is my job now.

He watches me for half a second and then looks away but I catch it in my peripheral.

Then his phone buzzes and he looks down at it, and his whole face does something that I can only describe as resigned suffering.