Control is a habit disguised as temperament. People call it personality because it sounds romantic, as if a man were born with restraint the way other men are born with dimples. I wasn’t. I built it, engineered it, soldered it to my bones until there was no gap left for chaos to breathe. Nights like the last one test the welds. I felt every seam when I sent Cheyenne away.
I stood by the window a long time after the elevator doors closed, watching the river shoulder the city’s lights downstream like a patient animal. The handprints she’d left on the glass were fading, two pale ovals that looked like the memory of touch. I left them there until the glass cooled and took itself back.
The phone on the console pulsed once—an event, not an emergency. I ignored it and lit the room properly. Can
