“Please.” She picks up her bag. She’s about to leave. I can see the professional re-entry happening in real time, the distance back in place. “Max.” I look at her. “Thank you,” she says. Toni says it. Not the compliance officer. The green eyes are direct and unmanaged for exactly three seconds. “For keeping the log.”
“I kept it before I knew you’d need it.”
She holds my gaze. “I know.” She walks. I watch her go, heels on concrete, the specific rhythm I could pick out of any crowd now without trying. At the exit ramp, she glances back once. She probably thinks it’s too far away for me to catch up. Itisn’t. I look back down at my phone. Pull up the log. Add a note at the bottom in the margin column, where she won’t see it unless she goes looking.
Day four since our deal. Left shoulder down. Progress.
I send her the file and jog up behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Toni Amato
My keys are in my hand.
That’s important. I want to establish that my keys are in my hand, I have my bag, I have my phone, I completed my supervisor call, and I am twenty-three steps from my car. This is a woman with a destination. A woman with a plan.
I left Max Stevens leaning against the concrete pillar. Dark hair. Blue eyes catching the dim garage light. His jacket on and his hands in his pockets, the other look on his face. The one that costs me more. I ignore it and think he’s letting me leave when he jogs up, catching me right at my car door.
“Toni.”
“I’m heading home,” I say.
“No, you’re not.”
“Excuse me?”
He has a specific way of moving in spaces that belong to other people. Unhurried, certain, as if the floor rerouted itself. “You’ve been on calls for two hours. You haven’t eaten since the protein bar at noon, which I know because you left the wrapper in the training room.”
“I was going to throw it away.”
“You forgot. Because Price called mid-session and you’ve been in your head since.” He stops three feet away, leaning against a car as if it belongs to him. Nice try at incognito. Thankfully, the garage is empty around us, ventilation humming, one fluorescent light stuttering at the far end. “Come with me.”
“Where.”
“Somewhere with a view.”
I grip my keys. “That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got right now.” His blue eyes hold mine. “I know a place. Rooftop. Nobody we know. City below us and cold air, and I’ll feed you a meal that isn’t a protein bar.” A pause. “Come with me.”
“We said no public.”
“This isn’t public. It’s private with a view.”
“Max.”
“Toni.” He says my name the way he says it when he’s done performing. Flat. Real. The way it sounds in a text at eleven forty-seven that doesn't need to say anything else. “One hour. Come with me.”
I drop my keys inmy bag.
He drives. I sit in the passenger seat of his car and watch Chicago move past the window and construct and dismantle the professional argument three times in twelve minutes. The radio is low. He doesn’t fill the silence, and I have stopped being surprised by that. Max Stevens in public is noise and grin and performance. Max Stevens in a car at seven p.m. on a Tuesday is just a man driving, one hand on the wheel, the city lights moving across the dark planes of his face. He pulls into a parking structure in River North that I don’t recognize. Takes a ticket. Finds a level. Cuts the engine.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Friend of mine owns the building. Bar on thirty-two, rooftop on thirty-three. Private elevator.” He glances at me. “Nobody from the league drinks here.”
“You checked.”
