A pause.
“No, I can’t really talk about it yet. Local security is handling it.”
Another pause, longer this time.
“I know. I love you too.”
Something in her voice softens on the last sentence, then tightens again immediately after, like love and guilt are braided together.
I turn away from the hall and open one of the kitchen drawers because pretending not to hear is sometimes easier with motion. Utensils. Clean towels. A corkscrew. Rental-house basics arranged too neatly by someone who doesn’t cook much.
The knife block on the counter catches my attention. Cheap rental knives. Lightweight handles. Dull edges. Nothing like the blade in that photo.
Miss You.
The words bother me more than a direct threat would. A threat is honest. Ugly, but straightforward. Miss You is intimate. Possessive. Designed to reach under Kara’s skin and live there. Whoever sent that picture understands her. That’s the part I don’t like.
Kara comes out a few minutes later looking paler than when she went in, but more composed too. Some people fall apart after contact with their safe person. Some patch themselves up because they’re afraid of worrying them more. She looks like the second kind.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “But apparently I can say the words ‘local security’ three times and make Vanessa breathe into a paper bag from two hundred miles away.”
“Did she ask where I was?”
Her eyes fall on me quickly.
“Yes.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That Sloane had someone nearby tonight.”
“Good.”
“She wanted a name.”
“And?”
“I said I was tired and didn’t want to get into details.”
Kara walks into the kitchen, then stops beside the island as if she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Her hair is still down from the beach, a little wild around her shoulders, red catching in the warm overhead light. She has changed into loose linen shorts and a thin sweater that slips off one shoulder whenever she moves. Bare feet. No makeup I can see. None needed.
My body notices all of it and I immediately blame the long stretch between women. It has been months. More than months, if I’m honest. Work has a way of eating time clean through without leaving much behind. A contract overseas. A maritime job off the Keys. A week helping Sloane with a private event that turned into three weeks because rich people attract problems the way open sugar attracts ants.
Women have existed in theory. Not in my bed or looking at me with tired green eyes and a mouth that says sharp things when she’s afraid.
That’s all this is. Biology combined with proximity and timing.
A beautiful woman in distress and a man who hasn’t touched anyone in longer than he wants to calculate. It’s really simple when I analyze it. Except nothing about Kara feels simple.
She inhales suddenly and looks around the kitchen. “I need to make something.”
“You hungry?”
“No.”
I wait and watch as she presses both hands flat on the island. “If I don’t do something with my hands, I’m going to crawl out of my skin.”
