Page 30 of The Art of Ruin

I look up before I can stop myself.

There is something in that sentence that feels less about a child than it should. He looks back at me, his expression unreadable. I wonder, suddenly and inconveniently, what his edges are.

Then I hate myself a little for wondering. “Understood,” I say.

He closes the folder, though his hand remains resting on top of it. “Your space is yours. No one will enter without permission. Letty has been told to knock.”

That catches me off guard.

I blink once. “Thank you.”

“She forgets when she’s excited.”

“Most children do.”

“I don’t want you to feel crowded.”

The words are practical.

The impact is not.

For a moment, I’m back in a different life, remembering all the places where my privacy had become negotiable without anyone asking me first. Friends who knew things about my relationship before I did. Employers who smiled across tables while keeping his secrets for him. Rooms I’d entered believing one thing, while everyone else knew another.

I breathe in.

Slowly.

“That won’t be a problem,” I say.

His gaze doesn’t leave my face, and I have the uncomfortable sense that he sees the breath I had to take.

“I also ask,” he continues, “that any visitors be cleared with me first.”

“I don’t have visitors.”

It comes out too quickly.

His eyes narrow a fraction.

Not suspicion.

Attention.

“I mean,” I correct, smoothing the edge from my voice, “that won’t be an issue.”

He nods once, accepting the revision even if he doesn’t believe it.

Silence stretches, not awkward exactly, but weighted. The kind of silence that asks what you’ll do with it. The old version of me would have filled it. Teased him. Made some remark about the folder, the schedule, the way he looks like he was born knowing how to intimidate paper.

I don’t.

I let the silence sit between us until it becomes his problem too.

He breaks it first.

“Do you have questions?”

I do. Too many, probably, but none of them are appropriate.