Page 44 of Heat Unscripted

My biology knew. Had known since the flat, since long before the flat, since the first time her voice found my ears through a speaker and my whole system went quiet the way it never did for anything.

But I didn’t trust my biology. I never had. Biology was instinct, and instinct was uncontrolled, and uncontrolled things produced uncontrolled outcomes, and uncontrolled outcomes were?—

I pressed my hands flat to the desk.

—exactly what had happened in that booth. Millions of people had heard the mate-call, heard the exact second Bram St.James’s careful composure went to glass on the floor and left something raw and shaking where it had been.

The whole world had heard me want something I couldn’t hold in.

And here I was, three blocks off, trying to sweep up the glass.

The cat on the wall shifted. Yawned. Settled again with its tail round its paws.

I sat in the quiet a long time.

The thinking didn’t help. I’d known it wouldn’t, had known walking out the door that this wasn’t a thinking problem, that no amount of analysis would close the gap between who I’d built myself into and who I’d have to become to hold what she’d offered.

But sitting with it, with the discomfort, with the not-knowing, with the rawness of never once in my life having let myself be uncertain about anything, that was something.

Not enough. Not yet.

But something.

The light had moved, the low November sun dragging its arc across the garden wall. The cat was gone.

My phone sat on the desk. No new messages. Cillian hadn’t checked in. He wouldn’t. He understood the way I processed and was giving me space, with that patience of his that never asked for an answer before the question’s finished being asked.

I thought about going back.

I thought about what I’d find. Tuck, bonded and certain, putting out the settled warmth of a man who’d finally stopped fighting himself. Cillian, steady, watchful, running the crisis with the calm of someone who’d been getting ready for it for years. Isobel, still recovering, her voice still gone, her scent still telling the whole truth she’d spent eleven years hiding.

I thought about what she’d see when I came back through her door. A man in his shirtsleeves, no coat, no vest, none of the careful armor he used to broadcast control and authority and a competence that left no room for a mistake.

A man who’d left because he was afraid of wanting something too much.

Not afraid of her. Never of her.

Afraid of himself. Of the version of himself that had come up in the booth, possessive and raw and shaking with a feeling that didn’t fit inside, careful and controlled and practical.

I stood.

The chair rolled back. The movement was decisive, the switch from weighing it to doing it that happens once I’ve processed enough to commit, even when the conclusion’s incomplete. I didn’t have a framework. I wasn’t going to build one now. I was going to walk back into that house with nothing but the honest, uncomfortable fact that I needed more time thanother people to feel safe with my own feelings, and hope that it was enough.

The room cost nothing to leave. I straightened my shirt, a pointless gesture, but the instinct was deep, and walked out.

Three blocks. Residential pavement. The November air carried London in late autumn, wet leaves, diesel, somebody’s woodsmoke, the sharp cold pressing on my skin. My peppercorn trailed behind me, sharp at the edges, still carrying the claiming note I couldn’t quite put down.

Not ready yet. But I was walking the right way, and I wasn’t going to stop.

NINETEEN

Cillian

The courier arrived that afternoon.

I’d been watching the house since the booth the way I watch a live mix, every variable tracked, nothing left to drift. The doorbell needed a new solenoid, the tone running a hair flat. I was at the door before the second ring, my body already between the porch and everything behind me.

The envelope was cream stock, heavy, the law firm’s name embossed in the corner in a typeface that cost money to print and more to receive. I signed for it. Closed the door. Read the cover letter through the windowed panel before I’d taken two steps back inside.