Page 37 of Don't Tell

I don't sleep.

10.Cade

I lie awake

My arm is over my face. The room is filled with the low hum of the building settling around me. It doesn’t change a thing. I'm still aware of her on the other side of the door. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear her breathing.

At some point, the city outside the windows turns gray, then pale gold, then the flat white of early morning. I get up, accepting that I won’t have any rest. I move quietly and cross to the bedroom door. I ease it open a few inches.

She's on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek. Her dark hair is loose across the pillow. She looks peaceful, just like the first time she slept in this bed. I still remember that day vividly. It was the first time she wasn’t deliberately frowning at me.

I cross the room without making a sound. I lean down and press my mouth to her forehead. Her skin is warm. She makes a small sound and then stills again.

I stand there for a moment longer than I need to.

Then I order breakfast to the suite, leave a note on the kitchen counter with her name at the top, and stand at the door for a beat with my hand on the frame.

It takes more effort than it should to leave. We still have so much to talk about — or rather, she has questions I haven't answered, and I have things I haven't said.

I wasn't exactly thinking clearly when I proposed a secret relationship. I wanted her close, and I moved toward that want.

But damn it all to hell, I want her badly.

The part I haven't told her is that I have my own reasons for keeping things quiet. I'm very well aware she won't appreciate those reasons. But how do I tell her that I don't want a public relationship because I don't want my family pestering me about her? That I'd like, for once, to keep something that belongs only to me?

The answer doesn't come to me even as I step out of the elevator and into the garage, and it still hasn't come to me by the time I'm walking through the glass doors of the Nightingale building an hour later.

"Good morning, Mr. Nightingale." James is at the front desk, already upright and alert. "Mr. Sutton and the acquisitions team are in conference room B. The Delacroix rep confirmed 9:30 a.m. You have the Wren Studio presentation at 11:00 a.m., and your 1:00 p.m. with legal was moved to an hour later." He keeps pace with me as I cross the lobby. "Mr. Hargrove called twice this morning, asking if you'd had a chance to review the Moreau portfolio."

"Tell him I'll get back to him by Thursday."

"Yes, sir." He peels off toward the desk as I reach the elevator.

The board is already assembled when I walk into conference room B — six of them arranged around the long table, laptops open, coffee poured. They stand when I come in.

My suit jacket comes off. I place it over the back of the chair at the head of the table. As I sit, I gesture for them to sit, which they do.

The team has put together a shortlist, and they walk me through it with the enthusiasm of people who believe they've done good work, which, in fairness, some of them have.

There's a sculptor based in Lyon whose work I've been watching for two years. A photographer from São Paulo who is about to become very expensive if we don't move soon. A muralist in Chicago whose last three commissions sold before the ink was dry.

I turn a page in the presentation folder.

There's a sketch in the folder of a woman smiling down at a child. It provokes a memory — another sketchbook I pulled out from a cleaning cart. There was no child in the image, only the woman smiling.

At the time, I assumed that was Suzanne’s mom, but after seeing her mother for myself and hearing exactly what she did to her, I realize how wrong I was. The woman must be the aunt she mentioned. I was right about it being a late loved one. I was right about how much Suzanne loved her.

I reach for my phone.

I want to text her and ask if she slept well, if she has eaten breakfast, if she found the note, if she's still annoyed with me, or something more complicated than that. I have my phone in my hand before I register that I'm holding it, and then I realize I don't have her number. I set the phone face down on the table.

"Mr. Nightingale."

I look up and see Neil Sutton staring at me from across the table.

His face is stuck in a half-smile, half-frown. It’s like he can’t decide whether to be offended or ecstatic about the words that are about to leave his mouth.

If I am to choose for him, it’ll be the former. Because nothing he says right now will do him any good. But Neil has never beenthe sharpest tool in the shed. He always thinks he has the upper hand, no matter how many times you put him down.