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“Now tell me what you want,” he says.
“I want you to leave that phone where it is. I want you not to call Pell. I want the case to stay open. I want Lena to keep thinking a stranger did all of this. I want you to stay a lawyer. I want you to keep the five names. I want you to stay. I want you to keep me. That is all I ask. Not forgive me. Just stay.”
He laughs once. It is thin and ugly.
“You killed five people and you want a life?”
“I want you. I want a life with you. That is all I am asking. That is all I have wanted since I first put my hands on you in that gym and had to treat you like just another client.”
He looks at the phone, then at me. He still does not pick it up. For a long time he does not speak. The glass is black behind him. Halloween is still on the other side of it, and even though the day has only started, it has already ended in this room.
“If I even think about this, you need to hear what it is first,” he says. “It is not me saying you were right. It is not me saying they deserved it. It is not me saying I can live with you, because I do not know if I can. I am a lawyer, Cruz. My name is on that firm. My sister just left this mountain. On Monday, there is going to be a case on my floor with no killer on paper, and if I keep this phone on my knee, I am choosing not to make the call. That can wreck the firm. That can take my license. And there is no way Lena would understand why I let you stand in my house and let this go. So do not look at me like I have already said yes, because I have not. I am telling you the cost before I decide if I am willing to pay it.”
“I hear you.”
He swallows hard. When he names them, he does it slow, like each one still has weight.
“Noah Brennan. Lauren Brooks. Kit Mori. Ivy Chen. Shane Cole. When you talk to me, you do not say their names like they were in the way. Ever. Do you understand me? You do not put a hand on anyone else, not in my building, not on this mountain, not anywhere. If you do, I use the phone and you go to jail, and you do not get a second chance.”
“I understand.”
“Lena never hears your name. She never sees your face. If she comes back up this road, you are gone before she gets to the glass. You do not get to explain yourself to her. You do not get to be a man she thinks is safe.”
“Yes.”
“You do not turn yourself in and you do not run. You stay where I can see you. You keep your job until I say otherwise. I stay a lawyer. I do not become the man who hid a body for you in a court I still have to walk into on Monday.”
“Yes.”
He swallows again. His voice stays flat on purpose, and it still shakes under it.
“And you do not call this forgiveness. You don’t deserve that. I am not giving you that. I am giving you the next hour. Then we see if I can live with it.”
I wait. I do not reach for him. I do not fill the quiet.
“That is enough,” I say. “That is more than I can ask for.”
He looks at my hands, then at my mouth, then at the mask on the table, like he is making sure it stays there. Neither of us gets up. The phone stays on his knee.
“Come here,” he says.
I move down the couch toward him, slow, and stop close enough that his knee touches mine and he looks up at me. He does not kiss me. He puts two fingers on my jaw the same way he took the mask off and holds me there. I can feel his pulse in his hand. I can feel mine in my throat.
“I know what you did,” he says. “I know why you did it, and I am not going to pretend that makes it clean. If you touch me, you do it as Cruz. Not as that voice. Not as that face. You hear me?”
“Yes.”
His thumb drags my lower lip. It is not kind. It is not clean either. It is a man testing if he can stand the mouth that said those names.
“Say it,” he tells me.
“Say what?”
“The line. The one you used on me when you were on the phone.”
“Don’t scream,” I say, quietly, against his mouth. “Kiss me.”
He does.
