His cold radiated through the sleeve of her coat where their arms almost brushed. He'd shortened his stride to match hers without being asked, as he always did, and she'd stopped pretending she didn't notice.
When they reached her apartment, she unlocked the door but turned around before she crossed the threshold. She hadn’t planned it. But before she knew it, she had stepped into his space. She tilted her face up. The peppermint-cold scent of himflooded her senses as she lifted her chin, her weight shifting forward onto her toes.
Frost formed at his collar. The cold rolling off him raised every hair on her forearms and settled against her flushed cheeks and her parted mouth like a touch that hadn't landed yet. His eyes dropped to her mouth, and the full weight of what she was doing hit her.
If she kissed this man, she would not be able to unkiss him. The taste of him would live in her mouth the way his scent already lived in her coat. The last time she'd leaned into a man and let her body lead, David Sterling had held it over her for a decade. Had watched her want closeness and used that wanting as leverage. Had taught her that the need was a door she opened and other people walked through to take things.
She stepped back and replaced the distance between them.
"Goodnight, Thorne."
She watched something quick, sharp, and immediately controlled move behind his eyes. His jaw tightened. The frost at his collar spread half an inch. He said nothing. He didn't need to. His body had been leaning toward hers, and now it wasn't.
“Goodnight, Miss Calloway,” he said as she closed the door between them.
She leaned back against the door.
What are you doing, Phoebe? You almost kissed him.
She couldn’t give an answer. She had no idea what she was doing.
You still want to.
She couldn't blame Thorne for the gap anymore. She'd built it.
“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should have it,” she told herself aloud. “You did the right thing. Kissing him would be a very bad idea.”
She covered her face with her hands and willed herself to believe that.
When she nearly had herself convinced, she took a deep breath and stepped out of the foyer and into her apartment, hanging up her coat and getting ready to settle in for the night. She was still arguing with herself when she walked into her bedroom and saw the card and frostlily on her vanity table.
She picked up the card. When she opened it, a sound chip activated, and her own voice filled the room.
She was going through her warm-up hums. Scales and lip trills she ran alone backstage when her nerves were bad. Sounds no audience member could hear from the seats.
The note inside was written in the same careful handwriting as the note in her dressing room.
Phoebe,
I know the difference between the voice you give them and the one you keep for yourself. The private one is better. I've been listening.
Your Truest Listener.
Her hands turned to ice.
Someone had been close enough to hear her when she thought she was alone and had recorded her. And then that same someone had been inside her quarters and placed this note in her bedroom.
She pulled the security comm Thorne had given her from her pocket. She ignored the tremor in her hands and pressed the emergency button.
Her voice continued to fill the air over and over in a loop.
nine
. . .
The cold Thornefelt on his walk back to his own apartment was wrong.
He was accustomed to the cold. He was the cold. But this wasn’t just his regular baseline cold. This was an absence of warmth. Her warmth. And it felt wrong. His body had already cooled to its normal, ambient temperature, and it made him miserable.
