CHAPTER 22
1127 Words
Reina's POV
The apartment was on the thirty second floor and the city was spread below it like something that had never considered being small.
I stood at the window for a moment after I came in. Not because the view was remarkable, though it was, but because I needed a second to calibrate. This was his space. The first time I'd been in it. It was clean and considered and looked like him, nothing excessive, nothing performing wealth, just quality in every surface and a particular absence of clutter that told you about a person.
He was in the kitchen when I arrived. Actual kitchen, actually doing something in it. He looked up when I came to the doorway.
"You cook," I said.
"Marginally." He turned back to the stove. "Marco asked me Sunday what I knew how to do. I've been thinking about it."
"You started cooking because my brother challenged you."
"I started cooking because he was right." He gestured toward the counter. "Sit. It's almost done."
I sat on a stool at the kitchen island and watched him finish whatever he was making with the focused competence of someone who had decided to learn something and done it seriously. It was pasta. Simple. He plated it without ceremony and set it in front of me and sat across the island.
I tasted it. Looked up.
"This is good," I said.
"Don't sound surprised."
"I'm not surprised. I'm impressed. There's a difference." I took another bite. "Who taught you?"
"YouTube. Three days ago." He said it completely straight.
I put my fork down and looked at him. "You learned to cook in three days because Marco—"
"Let's move on," he said.
I didn't laugh. But it was close. He saw it and something in his face did the quiet pleased thing it did when he'd gotten a reaction from me he'd been working toward without appearing to work toward it.
We ate. The city moved below us. The article and Celeste and the whole weight of the day sat outside the door where we'd left them and for a while neither of us invited it back in.
"Show me the statement," I said when the plates were cleared.
He pulled out his phone and slid it across the counter.
I read it carefully. It was precise and clean, Lena's construction, I could tell, but his voice in the tone. It laid out the facts of the forged document, named the estate fraud proceedings, and positioned me explicitly as an unwitting party who had been targeted deliberately. The final paragraph referenced his father's original endowment designation and what it had been intended for.
It didn't defend me so much as simply tell the truth. That was better than a defense.
"This line," I said, pointing. " 'Ms. Castillo's integrity throughout this situation has been beyond question.' " I looked up. "Take it out."
"Why?"
"Because it sounds like you're vouching for me. I don't need a vouch. The facts do it." I held his gaze. "The moment you make it personal it gives them something to write about."
He looked at the statement. Look at me. "You're right." He made a note. "Anything else?"
"The endowment paragraph is good. Keep it exactly as it is." I slid the phone back. "Send it tonight. Don't let her have another news cycle."
He nodded. Sent a message to Lena.
We moved to the living room. He sat at one end of the couch and I sat at the other and there was space between us that was comfortable but present — the kind of distance that two people maintain not because they want it but because they're both aware of what closing it would mean.
"She named the facility," I said. "My mother's."
"I know."
"She didn't do that by accident."
"No," he said. "She never does anything by accident."
"She's trying to find the thing that makes me fold." I looked at my hands. "She picked my mother because it's the most vulnerable thing in my life. The thing I can't control or protect by being competent."
"Theo is there from tomorrow. Two of his people round the clock."
"I know. Thank you." I paused. "It doesn't stop the feeling of it though. Knowing she looked at my life and found the thing I love most and aimed at it."
"No," he said. "It doesn't."
I looked at him. He was watching me with that steady attention and I saw something in it that was past professional concern and past circumstantial proximity. Something that had been building since a pavement outside my hospital and a folder of divorce papers and every conversation in between.
"Come here," he said quietly. Not demanding. Just — an offer placed on the table.
I looked at him for a moment. Then I closed the distance on the couch. Not all of it. Enough.
He didn't move toward me. He let me choose the exact configuration — which was so specifically him that it made something in my chest ache. He understood that I needed to be the one to decide how close.
I leaned back against the couch and my shoulder was against his arm and he didn't make anything of it. He just stayed still and present and let it be what it was.
"She's not going to find the thing that makes me fold," I said. "I want you to know that."
"I know."
"I've had it harder than this."
"I know that too." His voice was quiet. "That's not the part that concerns me."
"What concerns you?"
He was quiet for a moment. "That you'll absorb all of it and not tell me until it's already too heavy."
I looked out the window. At the city below. "I'm telling you now."
"I know," he said. "I noticed."
His hand was on the cushion between us. I don't know which of us moved — only that at some point my hand was next to his and then his fingers were around mine and neither of us addressed it.
We sat like that for a long time.
The statement went live at ten. Lena texted him at ten forty-seven — "Celeste's piece is already being reframed in our favor. Well done." — and he showed me the message without comment.
I should have gone home after that.
I didn't go home.
I fell asleep on his couch somewhere after eleven with his jacket over my shoulders that I didn't remember him putting there and the city quiet below us and his hand no longer holding mine but close enough that the warmth remained.
I didn't mind.
That was the most significant thing. I didn't mind at all.
- Writer
