Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
I take my hand off the glass lemon like it’s a trigger and exhale slowly. Melanie watches me, reads the answer in my shoulders before I speak.
“He’s moving,” I say. “We’ll let the guys peel and see.”
“Do you need to go?” she asks. No guilt, just a question.
“I need to keep you safe,” I say honestly. “Staying with you is the job and the choice.”
Her hand slides into mine again like an anchor. The bubble reforms—not ignorance, just our perimeter, redrawn on the fly. We pay for the lemon because of course we do, and I walk her out into cold air and a day that’s decided to be blue.
“Do I get a debrief?” she asks, half teasing, half not.
“Later,” I say, scanning once, twice, then letting myself look at her instead of the world. “Over cocoa. With candy canes.”
“Good,” she says. “And Lucas?”
“Yeah?”
“If you want to ask me a big question sometime,” she says, eyes on the tree lot in the distance, voice soft but steady, “you can.”
It’s the kind of sentence a man lives on for a week. “Copy,” I say, swallowing a smile I can’t keep down. “I’ll make a list.”
She bumps my shoulder. “Of course you will.”
We head back to the car with bags cutting into my fingers and her laughter cutting into the part of me that’s been armored too long. My phone buzzes once more.
DUKE: Mercer peeled onto the Green Line. Gunner’s shadowing. You’re clear for now.
Copy. Heading home.
DUKE: Keep your bubble tight.
I glance at Melanie. Our bubble isn’t just ours. It’s work and choice, fear and cocoa, a tree and a wedge and a woman who tells me I can ask.
“Home?” I ask.
“Home,” she says.
And for the first time in years, the word doesn’t feel like a place I leave. It feels like a place I build.
16
Melanie
The apartment is soft and golden—the tree on its timer, the lemon ornament catching light like a wink—but Lucas is quiet in that way that makes the room feel… edged. He does his normal sweep—deadbolt, wedge, blinds, glance at the fire escape—and then leans a shoulder against the kitchen counter, eyes far away, thumb worrying the ridge of his knuckle like he’s filing down a thought.
“Hot cocoa?” I offer, rattling candy canes like maracas.
“Always,” he says, automatic, and the smile happens, but the rest of him stays at half-power.
I steam milk, stir in chocolate, crown each cup with a whipped-cream mountain and striped cane. We sit on the couch. He wraps his hands around the mug like he needs the heat to decide what to say. I can almost hear the gears. Baby Peanut does a lazy roll, either voting for cocoa or reminding me I’m not the only one listening.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask finally, because the waiting is louder than anything he could say. “Should I be scared?”
His eyes lift, steady. “You should be aware, not scared.” He sets the mug down, turns fully toward me. “Mercer was on us today. We confirmed it. Duke pushed him off near the clock tower, and Gunner shadowed him to the train. We still don’t know who hired him or why he pivoted from the client to us. He’s not a smash-and-grab guy—he’s a watcher. That’s its own kind of risk.”
My heart does a tight, fast thing. “And me?”
“You’re in our orbit,” he says, honest, not softening it. “So we tighten the bubble.” He ticks them off, not patronizing—just concrete. “Vary routes, park under cameras, stairs over elevator when we can, no predictable times. Check-ins. If I’m not with you, I’ll have someone on the block I trust. If anything pings wrong—smell, vibe, pattern—you say gingerbread and we change the plan. I mean anything, Mel. Your intuition is a sensor.”
I breathe, slow like Dr. Patel taught me. “Okay.”
“I wish I could say ‘ignore it,’” he adds, mouth flattening. “I can’t. But I can say this: you are not alone in it. We are not reactive. We’re proactive.”
“Proactive and cocoa,” I say, lifting my mug like a toast I’m not quite ready to drink.
He clinks it, eyes warmed by something that isn’t just the chocolate. “Proactive and cocoa.”
We finish the mugs in tandem silence that’s less sharp. He rinses, I dry, and a strange domestic calm slides over the fear like a blanket. Bed sounds good—not as an escape, exactly, but as a place where our breaths line up and the world gets smaller.
He does the last checks with the ritual I now find soothing—the wedge seated, the chain set, the phone faced down on the nightstand. I slide under the duvet and feel him slip in beside me, one arm curving under my neck, the other landing warm and heavy across my waist.
“I’ll always keep you safe,” he says into my hair, as if it’s the simplest fact he knows.