Page 45 of Don't Tell

I pull back to look at him. "Yeah."

“Are you sure?”

I nod. "Yes. But you have to promise me something."

He doesn't move. "What?"

I hold his gaze. "You can't tell anyone."

12.Cade

"I won't tell anyone," I say.

She's looking at me from underneath her lashes. There are tiny beads of sweat across her forehead. It’s not what I expected her to say, but it’s exactly what I want to hear.

"Our pretty little secret," I tell her.

"Good," she says.

She reaches for me. I’m eager for her all over again.

We fly back in the early evening, the city lights coming up beneath us through the porthole glass. The car that brought her to the airfield this morning is waiting for us when we land. I've barely taken my hands off her since we left the hotel room. In the car, I pull her against my side, and she lets me, which is new. She lets me without calculating it first, without the small assessment she usually runs before she allows any contact. Her head is against my shoulder. She's watching the city come back through the window.

When we reach her building, she straightens up and reaches for the door handle.

I catch her wrist.

She turns.

I kiss her long and unhurried. She makes a sound low in her throat and kisses me back. When she pulls away, her eyes are still mostly closed.

"Secret," she says. "Remember?"

"It doesn't have to be a secret here."

She opens her mouth. I don't let her use it. I pull her back and kiss her again, harder this time, my hand at the side of her face. She makes the same sound as before, and her fingers close around my lapel. When we come up for air, she tries to frown, but her eyes are already laughing.

"I'm going to be busy most of the day tomorrow," I tell her. My thumb is on her jaw. "Come up to the suite when your shift ends, if you want."

She raises one eyebrow. "Cade Nightingale, are you asking me politely?" She gasps. “Or are you playing a trick on me?”

I laugh. "It’s not a trick. I just want to spend time with you."

She grabs my cheek and kisses me firmly on the lips. Then she gets out of the car.

She's three steps from the door when she turns back. She doesn't say anything. She just looks at me once, briefly, through the window, and then she goes inside.

I sit in the car for longer than I need to.

My first meeting the next morning is in the Mission with a printmaker. I've seen the pieces twice, in photographs and once in person at a group show in Oakland, where the framing didn'tdo them justice. His studio is small and serious — an ink-stained floor and racks of prints leaning against every wall.

We talk for forty minutes. He's precise about his work and suspicious of me, which I respect. By the end of it, he's less suspicious. I shake his hand, tell him Tomas will be in touch, and mean both things.

In the elevator, I take out my phone.

Cade

How's your shift?