Cracks
931 Words
wake at five forty five.
Old habit. My body doesn’t know how to sleep past it regardless of where I am or how little rest I actually got. I lie still for a moment, staring at the ceiling of a room that isn’t mine, in a house that isn’t mine, next to a life I borrowed for twelve months.
Then I get up.
I dress quickly. Dark leggings. A long sleeve top. Boots that are quiet on hardwood floors. I’ve been planning this morning since before I signed that contract — the estate staff won’t be fully active until seven. Mrs. Park arrives at six thirty. Kade rides at six.
That gives me a window.
Small. But enough.
I move through the east wing slowly, testing each floorboard before committing my weight. The hallway is dim, the kind of early morning dark that sits just ahead of dawn. I count doors the way Victor taught me. Notice details. Build the map in my head one corridor at a time.
The estate is bigger than the floor plan suggested. There are rooms the contract didn’t mention — a sitting room with covered furniture, a locked door at the end of the east corridor that the paperwork said nothing about. I photograph it with my phone. Note the lock type. Move on.
I reach the main staircase and pause.
Below me the entrance hall is still and silent. To my left the west wing stretches into shadow. Kade’s wing. Off limits.
I know I shouldn’t.
I go left anyway.
I stay close to the wall. Move slowly. The west wing is darker than the east, the curtains heavier, the air carrying that same cedar scent from yesterday but stronger here. More concentrated. Like this part of the house holds him even when he isn’t in it.
I count doors. Stop at the third one. This is it — the study. I can feel it before I even try the handle. Some instinct I’ve never been able to fully explain, a pull toward things that matter, that hold weight.
The handle doesn’t move.
Of course it doesn’t.
I crouch and examine the lock. Old mechanism. Newer deadbolt added recently — within the last two years judging by the lack of wear on the keyhole. Someone reinforced this door deliberately. Someone who had a specific reason to keep people out.
I straighten up.
I have tools for this. Not today. Too early, too much risk, too many unknowns. But soon.
I turn to leave.
And walk directly into a wall that wasn’t there before.
Except it isn’t a wall.
It’s Kade.
He’s in riding clothes — dark trousers, a fitted black jacket, gloves tucked under one arm. He’s already dressed, already ready, and he’s standing close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes.
He looks down at me with an expression that is perfectly, terrifyingly calm.
Neither of us speaks.
The silence stretches long enough that I can hear my own heartbeat. Long enough that I realize I’m holding my breath.
“Wrong wing,” he says finally.
His voice is quiet. Completely neutral. The same tone he uses for everything — dinner conversation, contract terms, and apparently catching his wife of less than twenty four hours creeping outside his study at dawn.
“I got turned around,” I say. Smooth. Easy. I practiced this too.
He looks at me for a long moment. Those dark eyes moving across my face the way they always do — searching, cataloging, deciding something I’m not privy to.
“The east wing is that direction,” he says. He doesn’t point. Just holds my gaze.
“Thank you,” I say.
I move to step around him.
His arm lifts. Not blocking me — just raising slightly, a gesture so small I almost miss it. But I don’t miss it. I notice everything.
“The door at the end of your corridor,” he says. “The locked one. It was my mother’s sitting room. The lock is old. If it gives you trouble let Mrs. Park know.”
I go still.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. He probably noticed the moment I stopped in front of it.
“I wasn’t trying to open it,” I say carefully.
“I know,” he says. Simply. Like he does know. Like he already has a complete understanding of exactly what I was and wasn’t doing in his hallway at five fifty in the morning.
He steps aside.
I walk past him. Close enough that I catch the full weight of that cedar scent and underneath it something else — something warm and dark and wolfish that my body recognizes before my mind does.
I keep walking.
I don’t look back.
I make it all the way to my suite, close the door, press my back against it.
My hands are shaking.
Not from fear exactly. From something more complicated than fear. From the realization sitting heavy in my chest that Kade Remington was awake and dressed and already moving through his house before I was. That he saw me in that corridor and said almost nothing. That he let me walk away.
Either he doesn’t suspect anything.
Or he already knows everything and is simply waiting to see what I do next.
I don’t know which possibility frightens me more.
I open my notebook.
I stare at yesterday’s entry. He is not what I was told.
I write one more line beneath it.
He is something worse. He is patient.
- Writer
