I stared at the message for a long moment, the studio suddenly feeling too small, too bright, my heart doing something erratic against my ribs.
"I don't have to see her," I said, mostly to myself, testing whether I believed it.
"No," Noah agreed carefully. "You don't."
"But I want to know why she's here." I stood, brushing fabric scraps off my jeans, my hands not quite steady. "Not the lobby version. The real one."
Noah rose with me, watching my face the way he did when he was deciding whether to argue or simply follow my lead. "Then we go down together. You don't have to face her alone, and you don't have to let her upstairs either. There's a room off the lobby, private, with glass walls facing the street. Public enough to be safe and private enough to actually talk."
I nodded, grate
