Page 63 of Suite 7

Kane: I’m thinking about you.

I set the phone down. Pick it up again. Read it twice more like the words might change.

Two texts. Eleven words between them. And my whole chest is doing something I don’t have a clinical term for.

The fact that I care this much — that good girl over a chicken salad did something to my pulse, that I’m thinking about you is currently the most important sentence in my phone — that goes in the box.

The box is now a warehouse.

“Okay, seriously, what is going on with you?”

Sloane sets down her latte, studying me with the focused attention she usually reserves for client briefs. I’ve seen her do this to a room full of executives. It’s no less unsettling at a coffee table.

“What? Nothing.” I snap back to attention.

She doesn’t respond. Just looks at me. Tilts her head slightly and looks some more.

“Sloane—”

“Shh. I’m reading you.”

I wait, which is the wrong move because it gives her time.

“Okay.” She picks up her latte and takes a slow sip before she answers, drawing it out on purpose. “You’ve got that look.”

“What look.”

“The one where you’re two seconds from either killing someone or dragging them into a closet.” She grins. “Mystery man?”

My thighs clench involuntarily under the table.

“Maybe.”

“Oh my GOD.” She leans forward. “What is he doing to you? Actually, don’t answer that, I can tell from your face and I’m going to need a moment.”

She fans herself with a napkin in a way that is entirely performative. “Is he — okay, I’m going to guess.” She sets down her latte with a triumphant little thump. “He’s incredible in bed. Like, unreasonably good. The kind of good where you’re lying there afterward thinking about it for days and you can’t concentrate on anything else and your whole body just—“ She waves her hand. “You know.”

I know.

I know so specifically and so urgently that I have to press my thighs together under the table.

“—because that’s exactly what you look like,” Sloane finishes. “A woman who has recently been made very aware of what she’s missing.”

The accuracy of that sentence is genuinely cruel.

“Sloane—”

“Am I wrong?”

You’re not wrong. You’re god knows how many more days early and about forty-eight hours off on the mechanics.

“You’re not entirely wrong,” I manage.

She beams. “I knew it. I could tell the moment you walked in. I know that look. That only comes from one place.” She picks up her latte, satisfied. “What’s he like?”

“He’s—“ I stop. Because the honest answer is: controlled, and certain, and infuriating, and the only person who has ever looked at me like the thing I was most ashamed of wanting was actually the most interesting thing about me. “Complicated.”

“Complicated.” She repeats the word like she’s weighing it. Sets her cup down. “How complicated?”