OFF LIMIT

Chapter 6

Theo sat in the guest room for a long time after Isabella fell asleep.

He wasn't entirely sure why. There was nothing left to do. She was safe, breathing evenly, the water on the nightstand within easy reach if she woke up needing it. He could have gone downstairs, poured himself something stronger than the wine she'd clearly had far too much of, and let the night end there.

He didn't move.

I'm so lonely. I want to be loved.

The words sat oddly in his chest, refusing to settle into any of the categories he usually sorted things into. He was good at sorting. He'd built an entire life on the discipline of it, grief kept separate from business, the ordinary chaos of raising a child alone walled off from both, each part of his life managed on its own terms so none of it ever bled into the others. It was how he'd survived his twenties. It was how he still functioned now.

Isabella's words didn't fit anywhere.

He thought about the girl he'd known since she was small, trailing after Sienna with scraped knees and an easy laugh, the kind of child who cried at sad movies and apologized to furniture when she bumped into it. He'd watched her grow up in pieces, home for holidays, birthdays, the ordinary rhythm of two families who'd become one somewhere along the way. He'd watched her become guarded after her father died, watched the easy laugh get rarer, watched her leave the country like she was trying to outrun something none of them had ever quite named.

He'd assumed grief. Of course he had. What else would it be?

I want to be loved.

Not I miss my father. Not even I'm sad. Something else, something that sounded less like grief and more like an old, quiet ache she'd been carrying long before her father ever died, and Theo, sitting in the dim light of a guest room at close to midnight, found himself troubled by exactly how little he actually knew about what was going on inside her.

He was not a man who often felt inadequate. It wasn't arrogance, simply the accumulated confidence of two decades spent solving problems other people couldn't, restructuring companies, navigating boardrooms full of men twice his size and half his patience. He was good at fixing things.

He didn't know how to fix this, because he didn't fully understand what this was.

He thought, briefly, of her father. Of the countless conversations they'd had over the years about their children, Sienna's stubbornness, Gabriel's ambition, Isabella's sensitivity, always spoken of with a kind of careful tenderness, as though she required a gentler handling than the rest of them. She feels everything twice as hard as everyone else, her father used to say, half exasperated, half proud. Just look out for her, if anything ever happens to me.

Theo had promised he would. He'd meant it entirely.

He wondered, sitting there, whether he'd actually been doing that, or whether he'd simply been assuming her silence meant she was fine because it was easier than asking harder questions he wasn't certain he knew how to answer.

He stood eventually, checked on Isabella once more, and made his way to his own room down the hall, restless in a way sleep wasn't going to fix.

He tried to work. He opened his laptop, pulled up the contract he was supposed to have finished reviewing hours ago, and stared at the same paragraph for nearly ten minutes without absorbing a single word of it.

I want to be loved.

He gave up on the contract.

Sitting there in the quiet of his study, he found himself doing something he couldn't entirely account for. Sienna had mentioned, more than once, some post or photo she'd seen, some update from a friend, always through the same word. i********:. He'd never had much use for it himself, had always found the entire concept faintly exhausting, but it occurred to him, staring at the ceiling, that there might be some version of Isabella visible there that he hadn't been paying attention to. Some small window into whatever she'd been carrying that she hadn't handed him directly.

He created an account at nearly one in the morning, with the mild embarrassment of a man well aware of how this would look if anyone ever found out. He meant to follow the whole family first, spread the requests out so it wouldn't look like anything in particular, Sienna, Gabriel, Isabella's mother, and then, finally, Isabella herself. He'd never used the app before in his life, had no real sense of how any of it worked, and somewhere between the search bar and a screen full of unfamiliar buttons, he managed to send a single follow request, hers, and nothing else.

He didn't notice the mistake.

Her account wasn't private. He scrolled slowly, deliberately, the way he might review a report, looking for something, though he couldn't have said exactly what. A handful of photos from her time abroad, a graduation shot, her and a group of friends he didn't recognize outside some building with old stone architecture, a few landscape shots from cities in the UK. A photo with Sienna from years back, the two of them younger, arms slung around each other, captioned with some inside joke he didn't understand. Nothing recent. Nothing revealing. Nothing that told him a single thing about loneliness, or love, or whatever she'd meant by either word.

He sat back eventually, faintly disappointed in himself for expecting an answer to appear in a grid of photographs, and closed the laptop, entirely unaware that the only follow request he'd successfully sent was sitting, at that very moment, in Isabella's notifications.

By the time morning came, he'd made a decision. Not a grand one. Simply this: he was going to pay closer attention. He was going to stop assuming her silence meant contentment. Whatever she needed, whatever she'd been too afraid to say even sober, he intended to actually notice it this time.

He started, in the only language he was entirely fluent in, by making breakfast.

The kitchen smelled like ginger and something warm and floral by the time he heard footsteps on the stairs, slow, careful, the unmistakable gait of someone whose head was actively punishing them for the night before.

Isabella appeared in the doorway a moment later, and Theo had to fight down the urge to laugh because she looked like she'd genuinely been through a war. Hair a disaster. Eyes swollen. Her pajama T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, sleep creases still visible on her cheek.

"Morning," he said, deliberately mild, sliding a plate toward the empty seat at the counter and setting a steaming mug beside it.

She eyed the mug with visible suspicion. "That's not coffee."

"No."

"I need coffee, Theo."

"You need this more." He nudged it closer. "Osmanthus milk. It'll settle your stomach better than coffee will right now, and it won't make the headache worse."

She looked at him like he'd personally betrayed her, but wrapped both hands around the mug anyway, apparently too tired to argue. She took a cautious sip, then a longer one, and something in her shoulders eased slightly.

"Fine," she muttered. "This is good."

"I know."

"Don't be smug about it."

"I haven't said anything."

"You're being smug with your face."

He allowed himself the smallest smile, turning back to the stove before she could catch it fully. "Sit. Eat something. Drink that slowly."

She sat, slowly, with the exaggerated care of someone whose skull felt fragile. He set a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of her. She ate silently while he observed her.

Not obviously. Theo had spent enough years in boardrooms to know how to watch someone without making them feel watched. He busied himself with his own coffee, glanced at the newspaper on the counter, and let the morning settle into something ordinary.

But he noticed things.

The way she kept pressing two fingers against her temple. The way she picked at the corner of her toast instead of actually eating it. The way her eyes avoided his whenever their gazes happened to meet.

"Stop staring."

Theo looked up from his coffee.

"I'm not staring."

"You are."

"I'm reading."

She looked at the newspaper in his hands. "It's upside down."

Theo lowered it.

For a second, neither of them said anything. Then Isabella's mouth twitched.

"You really are terrible at lying."

"So I've been told."

She took another sip of her drink. There was a faint silence between them, different from the comfortable quiet they'd shared a few minutes earlier.

Theo knew why. She was waiting for him to say something. He knew her well enough to recognize that particular look. She was trying to figure out how much damage she'd done the night before without having to ask directly.

He decided not to make her suffer.

"You were very drunk."

Her eyes closed. "Oh God."

"You'll survive."

"Did I embarrass myself?"

Theo considered that. "Define embarrassed."

She groaned and covered her face with both hands. "That bad?"

"You threw up on the carpet."

"I know that part. I remember getting home, at least."

"You also threw up on Sienna."

Her hands slowly lowered. "I did what?"

"Twice."

She stared at him in horror. "Please tell me you're joking."

"I'm not."

She dropped her forehead onto the counter. "I need to move countries."

"I don't think geography is going to solve this one."

"Maybe another planet."

"I don't think they have enough oxygen."

She lifted her head enough to glare at him. "You're enjoying this."

"A little."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

The answer came too easily. Theo hadn't meant anything by it. It was simply the kind of exchange they'd had for years, familiar and harmless. Still, something about the words made him pause, because he remembered the part of the night she clearly didn't.

I love you so much, Sienna. I don't want to lose you. I'm so lonely. I want to be loved.

He looked away before she could notice the change in his expression.

"Did anything else happen?"

There it was. The question he'd been half expecting.

Theo set his cup down. "Not much. You were mostly asleep on your feet."

"That's suspiciously vague."

"You were drunk."

"That doesn't answer the question."

"It answers enough of it."

She studied him for a moment. "Did I do anything embarrassing? Besides the obvious."

Theo thought of her arms around him. Of the way she'd mistaken him for Sienna. Of the words she'd whispered against his chest.

"No," he said. "Nothing worth repeating."

The lie wasn't entirely comfortable. But it wasn't cruel either. He didn't see a reason to hand her something she hadn't meant to say and almost certainly wouldn't remember on her own.

She seemed to relax. "Okay."

Theo nodded. "Okay."

For a moment, the conversation was over. Then Isabella looked down at her plate.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For last night."

"You don't need to apologize."

"I ruined your night."

"You didn't."

"I made Sienna clean up after me."

"That sounds like a problem between you and Sienna."

She smiled faintly. "She's going to kill me."

"Probably."

"You're supposed to defend me."

"I've decided to remain neutral."

She gave him a tired look. "Traitor."

He smiled. There it was again, that easy expression he'd known for years. Except now he found himself noticing how different she looked when she wasn't trying to smile.

The girl from his memories had always been expressive. Bright. Open. She had laughed loudly, cried easily, and never seemed particularly interested in hiding what she felt. Somewhere along the way, that had changed. He'd noticed it before, of course. He simply hadn't stopped long enough to consider why.

Now he couldn't stop thinking about it.

"How long have you been feeling like this?"

Her head lifted. "Like what?"

"Lonely."

The word landed differently this time. Her fingers tightened around the mug.

Theo immediately regretted asking.

She looked down again. "I don't know."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

He didn't push. He had learned, over the years, that Isabella could be stubborn when she felt cornered. The more directly he asked, the further away she'd retreat.

So he waited.

Eventually, she spoke. "Sometimes I just feel like everyone else has figured out how to live, and I'm still trying to catch up."

Theo listened.

"Everyone gets married, gets jobs, meets someone, builds a life. And I..." She shrugged. "I don't know. I came back here and suddenly everyone seemed to have moved forward without me."

"You haven't been left behind."

"It feels like it."

"Feelings aren't always facts."

She smiled sadly. "That's something you'd say."

"Because it's true."

"You're always so certain."

"No." He leaned back against the counter. "I just learned a long time ago that certainty is useful."

"That's not the same thing."

"No."

For once, he didn't argue. There was something underneath what she'd said that he couldn't quite reach, some second, unspoken layer to it, and he had the distinct sense that whatever she actually meant, she had no intention of explaining it further. He let it go.

His phone buzzed once on the counter. He glanced at it out of habit, then remembered, with a small measure of relief, that it was Sunday. No meetings. No calls waiting to be returned.

"No work today," he said, mostly to himself, and set the phone face down.

"Wow. The world's ending."

"Very funny."

"Speaking of last night." Isabella tilted her head. "Weren't you supposed to be gone until this morning? The engagement party?"

"I left early."

"Why?"

Theo considered how much of an answer that actually deserved. "Too many people. Too many conversations I didn't particularly want to have."

"You went to a party and left because there were people at it?"

"When you put it like that, it sounds worse than it was."

"It sounds exactly as bad as it was."

He allowed himself a faint smile. "My employees tend to get nervous around me at those things. Everyone's too busy trying to say the right thing to actually say anything. I got tired of watching people choose their words like they were defusing something." He shrugged. "Coming home seemed easier."

"That's a little sad, Theo."

"It's efficient."

"That's not the same thing either."

"No," he admitted. "It isn't."

She studied him for a moment, something almost soft in her expression, and he found himself oddly grateful when she didn't push further.

"Have you seen my phone, by the way?" she asked, glancing around the counter. "I can't find it anywhere."

"It's charging. It died sometime last night, I plugged it in before I went to bed."

"Oh." She retrieved it from the outlet by the toaster and switched it on, scrolling through whatever had accumulated overnight while she'd been unconscious.

Theo watched, mildly curious, as her expression shifted from bleary disinterest into something sharper.

Then she smiled. A real one, slow and a little too knowing.

"Theo." She looked up at him. "When did you make an i********: account?"

He went very still. "How would you know that."

"Because I just accepted your request."

Internally, Theo was already cursing himself. He'd been so careful, or thought he had, telling himself none of it would matter until he decided what to do with it. He hadn't accounted for the possibility that the request itself would simply sit there, waiting, patient and undeniable, for her to find it herself before he'd had the chance to think of an explanation.

How did I not check that it went through properly?

He'd spent two decades reviewing contracts line by line, catching details other men missed entirely, and he'd managed to fumble something as simple as a social media app at one in the morning.

Theo cleared his throat, momentarily caught without a ready answer. "I felt like I needed one."

"That's it? That's the whole reason?"

"What other reason would there be?"

"I don't know. I just didn't take you for the social media type." She was still scrolling, and he watched her expression shift again, faint amusement settling in. "You have no profile picture. No posts. No bio. You're just, a name and a blank gray circle."

"I didn't get that far."

"Clearly." She looked up at him, something bright and teasing in her eyes that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Go get your phone. I'm fixing this."

"That's not necessary."

"Theo." She was already standing, setting her tea aside. "You can't just exist online as a ghost. Go get it."

He went and got it, mostly because arguing seemed like more effort than it was worth, and because some part of him, one he didn't examine too closely, didn't actually mind the fuss she was making. On the way back, he pulled up the app himself and followed Sienna, quickly, deliberately, so it wouldn't look quite so obvious that hers had been the only account he'd bothered with the night before.

He handed the phone over once that was done. Isabella took it with the brisk efficiency of someone handling a task she'd clearly done a hundred times for other people.

"Okay." She held the phone up, angling it toward him. "Profile picture. Stand there."

"Right now?"

"Right now."

"I'm in pajama pants."

"Nobody's going to see below your shoulders, Theo, sit still."

He sat. She took the photo. She immediately made a face.

"No."

"What's wrong with it?"

"You look like you're being interrogated."

"I do not."

"You look like a man who's about to ask for a lawyer." She was already lining up another shot. "Smile."

He smiled. It felt, he was fairly sure, entirely normal.

"That's worse. Now you look like you're pretending to smile for a hostage video."

"I don't know what you want from me, Isabella."

"I want you to look like a human being who occasionally experiences joy." She lowered the phone, studying him with the exact same critical focus she'd probably once given her own university papers. "Just, think about something you actually like. Don't perform it. Just feel it."

He wasn't sure what expression crossed his face in that moment, mostly because he hadn't been thinking about anything in particular except the fact that she was standing close enough that he could see the small furrow of concentration between her brows, phone raised, tongue caught briefly between her teeth the way it had been since she was a teenager trying to get a photo exactly right.

The shutter clicked.

"There." She turned the screen toward him, satisfied. "That one's good."

He looked at it. It was, admittedly, better than the previous four attempts, something easier in his expression, less composed than usual.

"Fine," he said. "Use that one."

She set it as his profile picture without further ceremony, added a short, forgettable bio, checked his privacy settings, and handed the phone back with the air of someone who had just completed a minor act of public service.

"There. Now you're a real person on the internet."

"I appreciate the effort."

"You should. That took real skill." She picked her tea back up, entirely pleased with herself. "You're welcome."