Page 30 of The Silent Hour

When the doors opened onto the parking level, the air hit cold and smelled of concrete and exhaust. I stepped out first.

"Have a good night," I said, my tone deliberately neutral.

Her answer came softly, almost tentative, trailing behind me as I walked. "You too."

I didn't look back. I kept walking, past a row of dark sedans, until I reached my car. The door shut behind me with a solid thud that cut off the garage and everything in it. I let out a long breath and dragged a hand through my hair and let myself.

I could reassign her to another floor, move her under Knox or Rafa’s supervision, make it so she never had to step foot on this side of the building again. But that was fucking overkill—a sledgehammer where a scalpel would do. She hadn’t crossed any lines, hadn’t said a thing out of turn, and neither had I.

My hands were clean. My intentions were too. So why was I even considering it? The impulse felt foreign, almost panicked, like the quickened beat of my heart when the elevator doors closed and her perfume still hung in the air.

I even briefly considered Serena, but then promptly reconsidered. Any redirect would make me look guilty of something I wasn't. I was not a damn animal. My sister, on the other hand, I thought of the way Serena had once reduced a second-year associate to tears in the middle of a deposition prep, her voice never once rising above a pleasant, almost musical register as she did it. She'd smiled at me afterward like she'd done the kid a favor.

Absolutely fucking not.

Our firm's reputation was too valuable. Rumors moved fast in legal circles, passed between assistants at the coffee station and partners at charity dinners, and they didn't need to be true to do damage. All it took was one raised eyebrow, one overheard comment in the wrong hallway.

I thought of my desk. Julia's photo in its silver frame, the one from Positano where she was laughing at something off-camera, her hair loose and wild in the sea wind. Our daughters in the other frame beside it and on the wall directly behind my desk, yet another portrait. My wedding band, black tungsten, which I'd never once removed.

There was nothing ambiguous about any of it.

I intended to keep it that way.

"DON'T FAST-FORWARD," Julia mumbled, her voice thick with sleep as her lashes fluttered against her cheeks.

I froze mid-reach for the remote, caught like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Her eyes cracked open just enough to pin me with suspicion. I smirked, dragging my hand lazily along her thigh beneath the hem of my T-shirt she'd stolen.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Mm-hmm." Her side-eye could've cut glass, even half-asleep. "Last week, you skipped an entire episode and acted like I wouldn't notice."

"You saw half of it, so that wasn't skipping," I countered, letting her weight settle more fully against me. "Besides, we had the recap."

Her head dropped back onto my shoulder, auburn hair brushing my jaw and carrying the faint scent of coconut from her shower. The cotton of my shirt had slipped from one shoulder, her bare legs tangled with mine.

This was my favorite place in the world. Here. With her, in the quiet between everything else. The television flickered, blue light chasing shadows across the room, but I wasn't watching Ozark anymore.

I was watching her. I had been for an unreasonable amount of time. I brushed a strand of auburn hair away from her face. My thumb lingered against her cheekbone before I cupped her jaw, gently tilting her face toward mine.

Her lips parted slightly, a soft breath escaping as her eyes searched mine in the flickering blue light. The faint scent of coconut from her hair mixed with the familiar warmth of our bed. I could feel the steady rhythm of her heart where my hand rested against her side.

Maybe it was the lingering tension from the office, that strange, charged quiet in the elevator. Maybe I just needed to feel the solid truth of her after a day of posturing and polished lies. Or maybe it was this—the way love for her carved out a quiet space in me that no one else ever touched.

“You know you mean the world to me, don’t you?” I murmured, my voice low, the one I used only here, in the dark with her.

Her expression softened, the last traces of sleep giving way to something deeper. Her hand came up to rest against my jaw, her thumb brushing the stubble there. Then I kissed her. Not hurried or hungry, but slow, deep, like relearning a language I’d never forgotten. Her mouth was warm and tasted faintly of mint from her toothpaste.

I kissed her because Julia was where the noise stopped.

The depositions, the clients, the meetings—it all fell away here, with the weight of her against me and the quiet certainty of her kiss. She kissed me back, soft and sure, her fingers tangling in my hair. It wasn’t habit. It wasn’t obligation. It was the anchor I’d been swinging toward all day without realizing it.

It was home.

And there was nowhere else I would rather have been.

CHAPTER NINE

ETHAN