The house felt different after dark.
Quieter, even with the same hum in the walls and the distant, steady drip of the eaves. Shadows sat heavier in the corners; the rain had thinned to the occasional soft patter, like the storm was catching its breath.
Ariel lay awake.
The clock on the nightstand glowed 2:13 a.m. in small, accusing numbers. Mara's pills had taken the edge off the ache in her side and weighted her limbs, but her mind refused to shut down. Every time she closed her eyes, the recordings tried to crawl back in.
Then just… kill her.
She turned onto her uninjured side carefully, facing the window. The curtains were half‑open; a thin slice of streetlamp spilled across the floor, painting a pale path between the bed and the door.
She followed it with her eyes.
She lasted nineteen more breaths.
Then she threw the blanket back and swung her legs over the edge.
Pain flared in protest. She waited it out, breathing shallowly. The cool floor under her bare feet made her shiver.
Mara had gone home for a few hours of real sleep. Chris had walked her to bed, waited until she lay down, then retreated with obvious reluctance to the room down the hall Arlo had assigned him. Arlo himself had disappeared with a murmured, "Call if you need anything," and a look that said he didn't trust himself not to linger.
She stood slowly, one hand on the headboard, and shuffled to the door.
The hallway outside was dim, lit only by a small lamp at the far end. The safe house had settled into its bones,no footsteps, no low voices, no clatter from the kitchen.
She should have gone back.
Instead, she found herself padding down the hall, one hand trailing the wall for balance.
Arlo's door was open a crack.
Light spilled out, warmer than the lamp's. She stopped in front of it before she could decide not to.
Through the gap, she saw his back first.
He sat on the edge of the narrow bed, head bent over a file. The overhead light was off; only a small lamp on the dresser was on, casting his shoulders in tired lines. His sweater had been discarded; he wore just a T‑shirt now, sleeves pushed up, forearms marked with faint white scars she hadn't noticed before.
He heard her before he saw her.
"Can't sleep?" he asked, without turning.
She stiffened. "I didn't knock."
"You breathe," he said. "Walls aren't that thick."
"Creepy," she muttered.
He half‑turned, just enough that she could see his face. There were shadows under his eyes now too.
"You shouldn't be on your feet," he said.
"You shouldn't be reading whatever that is instead of sleeping," she countered.
He let the file close, the sound soft. "Touché."
They looked at each other across the fracture in the door.
She could have left it there,awkward quip, retreat, blanket, staring at the ceiling until dawn. Instead, the words rolled out before she could catch them.
"Can I… come in?"
His expression flickered.
"Door's open," he said.
It wasn't a yes, not exactly. It also wasn't a no.
She pushed the door wider and stepped inside.
His room was almost as sparse as hers,bed, dresser, a chair in the corner with his discarded sweater over the back, a small table with a glass of water and his phone facedown. No photos. No personal debris. The only sign he'd claimed the space at all was the open file and the way the lamp light had been angled just so.
"You sleep here?" she asked, for lack of anything better.
"Tonight," he said. "Tomorrow, who knows. I'm not sentimental about mattresses."
She eased herself onto the chair in the corner, lowering slowly, biting back a wince when her side tugged.
He watched her with that same controlled focus he gave everything that mattered. "Mara would kill me if she knew you were walking around at two a.m.," he said.
"Mara isn't here," Ariel said. "And anyway, I'm just… walking. Not running laps."
"Still," he said.
"Are you going to send me back?" she asked. "Like a kid caught out of bed?"
"No," he said.
"Why not?" she pressed.
He considered. "Because you came here instead of the kitchen," he said.
"I wasn't going to stab anyone," she said dryly.
"I meant you came to talk, not to ransack my fridge," he said. "That seems like an improvement."
She dropped her gaze to her hands. Her fingers twisted in the hem of her shirt.
"I couldn't sleep," she said, quieter now. "Every time I close my eyes, it's… them. Berry. Harry. My shop. The idea that it was always more his than mine."
"It wasn't," Arlo said.
"It feels like it," she replied.
He didn't argue.
For a moment, the only sound was the tick of the cheap clock on his wall and the faint buzz of the lamp.
"I keep thinking about that day," she said. "When we put the new shelves in. Harry said he found a guy who could get us a discount on solid wood. Berry brought cupcakes. I cried because it felt like my dream was finally real. They both hugged me."
Her throat tightened. She swallowed hard.
"I keep wondering," she went on, "if they laughed about it later. If he told her, 'See? I told you she'd make the perfect cover.'"
"They didn't have to laugh for it to be ugly," Arlo said quietly. "Some people do their worst damage dead serious."
"Were you watching then?" she asked.
His jaw moved. "On and off," he admitted. "The minute Harry proposed using your place, I started paying attention."
"How?" she said. "Cameras? Bugs? Guys in cafes with newspapers and holes cut out?"
A corner of his mouth twitched. "Nothing that cartoonish," he said. "And no, I didn't have anything inside the shop when you were there. That was… a line I didn't cross."
"Because you're ethical," she said, a thin edge to it.
"Because I didn't want to see you smile at strangers and wonder if they were mine," he said.
Her breath caught.
"That's worse," she whispered.
He shrugged, a tiny, helpless movement. "I didn't say it was rational."
Silence again, weighted now with things neither of them knew how to name.
"You know what's messed up?" she said after a moment.
He arched a brow.
"I'm sitting here," she said, "in a house you own,or almost own—two rooms away from a man who is apparently willing to break hands for breathing wrong around me, and I feel… safer than I did in my shop for the last year."
"That's not messed up," Arlo said. "That's math."
"Math?" she echoed.
"In there," he nodded toward the vague direction of the shop, "you were surrounded by people who smiled and lied. Here, you're with people who don't bother smiling unless they mean it."
"You barely smile at all," she said.
"Exactly," he replied.
Her lips twitched. It felt wrong, and necessary.
"You said I was the problem set," she reminded him. "You two are the disaster response team."
"Something like that," he said.
"And what are you?" she asked. "When you're not… this. Crime lord. Accountant of people's bad choices."
He looked briefly startled, as if he hadn't expected the question to turn.
"I'm not sure there is a 'not this' anymore," he said.
"That's sad," she said.
"Says the girl who thinks she is her bookshop," he countered.
She flinched. He noticed. His expression softened.
"Sorry," he said. "That was… sharper than I meant."
"No," she said. "You're right. It just hurts to hear."
"That's usually how the right things feel," he said.
She leaned back against the chair, closing her eyes for a second.
"You know," she said slowly, "if someone had told me six months ago that I'd be sitting in a safe house at two in the morning, talking to the man who once held a gun to my head about… feelings… I'd have recommended them a brain scan."
"We could still schedule one," he said. "For all of us."
She huffed out a tiny laugh. It tugged at her stitches. "You're not even good at jokes," she said.
"I'm learning," he replied.
When she opened her eyes again, he was watching her in that way that made her feel like the only thing in the room worth cataloguing.
It should have scared her more than it did.
"Why did you hug me?" she asked, the question spilling out of somewhere small and raw. "On the floor. Earlier."
His gaze didn't waver. "Because you were falling apart," he said. "And because I remember every time someone should have held you and didn't."
"That's not an answer," she said.
"It's the truth," he said.
She shook her head. "You could have stood back. Let Chris do it. He wanted to. I saw his face."
"I know," Arlo said.
"So why you?" she pushed.
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Because I took so much from you in that warehouse," he said finally, voice low. "I wanted to give something back that didn't cost you more."
"It cost," she whispered.
"I know," he said. "And you still stayed."
Her heart thudded, slow and heavy.
"You keep saying that like it's a compliment," she muttered. "Like staying was smart."
"It wasn't smart," he said. "It was brave."
"I don't feel brave," she said.
"You don't have to feel it to be it," he replied.
The space between them felt charged, like the air before lightning.
She looked down at her hands again, then back up.
"Come here," she said.
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Over here," she clarified, nodding at the bed. "Sit."
Wariness flashed across his face. "Ariel—"
"It's two a.m.," she said. "I can't sleep. My head is full of their voices. And you're sitting over there like you're one bad decision away from walking out of this house and never coming back because it'd be easier than… this."
She gestured vaguely between them.
"You're not wrong," he said, dry.
"So sit," she repeated, "and make it harder to leave."
He hesitated.
"You said no touching unless I start it," she added. "I'm starting it. Sit. It's still your bed, not mine. I won't tell Mara."
"That's not what she'd yell about," he said under his breath.
Still, he pushed himself up and crossed the small room, sinking onto the edge of the bed a careful distance from her chair. There was a good two feet of air between them.
"Happy?" he asked.
"Not the word," she said. "Less likely to spiral, maybe."
He huffed.
Carefully, she stood again, the chair creaking in protest, and took the two steps that brought her closer. Her side protested; she ignored it.
She perched on the bed beside him, back propped against the headboard, leaving that same safe space between them. Her breaths came a little faster now, but not from pain.
Up close like this, with the lamp throwing half his face into shadow, he looked less like an untouchable problem and more like a man who hadn't slept properly in a very long time.
"Is this allowed?" he asked.
"I'm the one who wrote the rules," she said. "I can amend them."
"You said no touching unless—"
"Unless I start it," she said. "Try to keep up."
His lips curved. "Noted."
For a moment, they just sat there, shoulders almost but not quite aligned, the silence no longer heavy, just… present.
She let her head fall back, staring at the ceiling.
"Do you ever regret it?" she asked quietly. "Any of it. The life. The power. The fear you wear like a suit."
"Yes," he said, without hesitation.
She turned her head. "You said once you didn't lose sleep."
"I lied," he said.
She studied him, the line of his profile, the tension in his jaw, the faint scar near his temple she'd never noticed.
"What do you regret most?" she asked.
He exhaled slowly. "That I didn't pull Harry out sooner," he said. "That I saw your name in his reports and didn't shut it down on principle. That I walked into your shop that first time and let you smile at me without telling you I was the reason your shelves were about to become collateral."
"You bought a book," she said.
He glanced at her. "I did."
"Did you read it?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Twice."
She snorted. "Liar."
"I read the parts about impossible choices," he said. "Left the kissing for you."
Her cheeks warmed, traitorously.
"You… don't get to talk about kissing," she said. "We're not—this isn't—"
"I know what it isn't," he said softly.
His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth.
She felt it like a touch.
Her heart stuttered.
"Arlo," she said.
"Yes."
"This is a bad idea," she whispered.
"The worst," he agreed.
She swallowed. "I can't handle… more betrayal. Or manipulation. Or you using how I feel to… to keep me in line."
"I know," he said.
"If this becomes… anything," she went on, words shaking now, "it has to be… honest. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. I can't survive another person smiling at me while calculating how to use my heart as leverage."
He turned toward her fully then, one knee angling onto the mattress, body still maintaining that promised distance even as his eyes came closer.
"Ariel," he said, and there was something in his tone she hadn't heard before. "If this becomes anything, it will be the one piece of my life I am not allowed to turn into a weapon. I am many things. I will not be that."
She searched his face, looking for the tell,some flicker that would give away the lie.
She didn't see one.
She didn't see safety, either. Not the kind she'd once thought Berry's couch could give her. What she saw was something riskier, sharp‑edged, and strange:
A man who could end people with a word, sitting on his own bed at two in the morning, telling her he didn't trust himself not to use her and asking,without asking,for a chance to be better than that.
Her hand moved almost on its own.
She lifted it, slowly, giving herself time to pull back. Her fingers hovered in the air between them.
He went very still.
She touched his cheek.
Just… rested her fingers against the rough line of stubble and warm skin, her thumb near the corner of his mouth.
His breath hitched.
He didn't move into it. Didn't flinch away. Just… froze, like any movement might break the moment.
"This," she said softly, "is me… starting it."
His eyes closed, briefly. When they opened again, heat and something like pain burned there.
"Careful," he murmured. "You don't know what you're doing."
"Yes," she said. "I do."
She slid her hand back, breaking the contact but not the line between them.
"I'm not promising you anything," she added. "Not forgiveness, not forever. I don't know what I'll feel when I wake up tomorrow and remember that my best friend wished me dead. I might hate you. Both of you. I might love you. I might want to burn the whole world down."
"I'll hold the matches," he said quietly.
She huffed a breath that was almost a laugh, almost a sob.
"I just… needed to know," she said, voice barely above a whisper, "that not every touch I get from you is about control. That some of it can just be… human."
"Most of it already is," he said.
The room pressed in around them, small and intimate, too full of unsaid things.
She shifted, carefully, and let her shoulder rest against his arm.
Light. Barely there.
Every nerve in her body felt it.
He inhaled sharply.
"You okay?" she asked.
"I've had bullets taken out with less fuss than this," he said.
"Drama queen," she muttered.
He let his arm settle, infinitesimally, so she had something steadier to lean against without jostling her stitches.
They sat like that, side by side, not looking directly at each other, sharing warmth and silence.
After a while, her eyes began to drift closed. The exhaustion she'd been holding at bay crashed back in, heavy and insistent. The voices in her head were still there, but softer now, drowned out a little by the rhythm of his breathing and the solid line of his arm.
"If you fall asleep here," he said quietly, "Mara will kill me in the morning."
"She likes me more than you," Ariel mumbled, words blurring at the edges. "You'll be fine."
"I doubt that," he said.
She didn't answer.
Her head tipped, resting gently against his shoulder.
He stilled, every muscle protesting and indulging at once.
"Ariel," he said, barely louder than the hum of the lamp. "You sure?"
She made a small sound that might have been assent. Or just sleep.
He stared at the wall for a long moment, the weight of her against him both fragile and overwhelming.
Then, very carefully, he reached across with his free hand and thumbed the lamp off.
Darkness wrapped around them, soft and close. The streetlamp outside painted a faint stripe across the floor, stopping just short of the bed.
He sat there, rigid and ridiculously careful, while her breathing evened out and her body grew heavier against his.
He'd held her while she sobbed. He'd held her while she bled.
This felt far more dangerous.
"Sleep," he whispered into the dark. "I'll keep watch."
For once, the promise wasn't a threat, or a strategy, or leverage.
It was just a man sitting in the dark beside a girl who'd survived everyone else's bad decisions, choosing—for this small, stolen stretch of night,to be nothing more than a warm place for her to lean.
Outside, the storm had finally passed.
Inside, the new one was only beginning—
slow, quiet, and edged with something that looked suspiciously like hope.
Ariel woke to warmth that wasn't a blanket.
For a disorienting second, she thought the bed had shifted under her. Then her brain caught up: the solid heat at her side wasn't mattress at all.
It was Arlo.
Her cheek rested against his shoulder, her hand loosely fisted in the fabric of his T‑shirt near his ribs. His arm was along the top of the mattress, careful and stiff, like he'd spent the entire night not quite daring to relax. The faint gray of early morning leaked around the edges of the curtain, softening the boxy lines of the small room.
Memory came back in pieces.
The recorder. Berry's voice. The bathroom. The screaming. The shower. The coffee. The way exhaustion had finally dragged her down here, on this bed, sitting beside him. Her hand on his cheek. Her head tipping against his shoulder while she'd mumbled something about Mara killing him.
Apparently, she hadn't moved since.
She froze.
If she stayed perfectly still, maybe reality would hold off a few more seconds. Maybe the world outside this narrow slice of bed and warmth and soft breathing would forget to find her.
Arlo moved first.
A slow inhale deepened his chest under her palm. His muscles tightened for a heartbeat, instinct kicking in, then eased as awareness followed. His head tipped just enough that when he spoke, she felt the rumble of his voice in his shoulder more than she heard it.
"Morning," he said quietly.
Her fingers flexed in his shirt before she could stop them.
"This is not my bed," she said, voice still sleep‑rough.
"Technically, it is," he said. "You've commandeered it."
She shifted, just enough to see his face. His hair was a mess, flattened on one side, sticking up in the back. There was a crease on his cheek from the pillow. The harsh lines she was used to seeing were softer in the early light.
"You stayed," she said.
"You fell asleep on my arm," he replied. "I figured sawing it off to escape would send the wrong message."
A startled huff escaped her. "You're making jokes at six in the morning," she said. "This is a sign of the apocalypse."
"It's closer to seven," he said. "You overslept."
"Trauma hangover," she muttered. "It happens."
Carefully, she pushed herself up a little, testing her side. The ache was there, but dulled. Her muscles protested the hours spent in one position. As she moved, her hand slid over his chest, catching on the sudden thud of his heartbeat.
She realized, belatedly, how close they were.
"How's the pain?" he asked, the medic's question by now, not just Mara's.
"Manageable," she said. "Embarrassment is louder."
"About?" he asked.
She gestured vaguely between them. "This. Me. You. Bed. The whole… tableau."
"If it helps," he said, "I spent most of the night too tense to enjoy the scandal."
"That does help, actually," she said.
Silence stretched for a moment, not quite awkward, just… cautious.
"You can move," he added. "If you want. I'm not… holding you here."
She studied his face. He meant it. His body hadn't angled toward her, hadn't tried to close the gap she'd left the night before. He looked like a man who'd drawn a line in his own head and was clinging to it by his fingernails.
Slowly, she slid back a few inches, rearranging herself so her back rested against the headboard again. The loss of warmth was immediate.
He pulled his arm down, flexing his fingers as blood flow returned. The skin there was faintly reddened where her weight had pressed.
"Sorry," she said.
"I've had worse pins and needles," he said.
She watched him shake out his hand. The domesticity of it—the two of them sitting on a rumpled bed, talking about numb limbs like they hadn't spent yesterday dismantling her life—felt surreal and oddly grounding.
"Did you sleep at all?" she asked.
"A little," he said. "Long enough to have one very unhelpful dream about your shop."
She tensed. "Unhelpful how?"
"The daffodils were on fire," he said. "You kept telling me to stop putting them out."
Her chest squeezed. "Maybe Past Me was making a point," she said.
"Past You is very bossy," he replied.
"Current me is worse," she said.
He sobered a fraction, studying her. "How's your head?" he asked, and she knew he meant more than the physical.
She searched for the answer. The same old ache was there, like a bruise under the skin. But the sharp edge of shock had dulled, just enough to let other sensations in.
"Loud," she said. "But… less like screaming into tiles. More like… static with lyrics I hate."
"That's… an improvement?" he said.
"On a very depressing scale, yes," she said.
His gaze flicked briefly to the doorway, then back. "Chris is going to combust when he realizes you're not in your room," he said.
"He'll survive," she replied. "He's been… very survivable so far."
"You're not wrong," Arlo said.
She hesitated. "I meant what I said last night," she added, quieter now. "About this. About you. About not being bait. About not letting you,anyone,turn whatever this is into… leverage."
"You've reminded me three times," he said. "I was listening the first."
"I know," she said. "I just… needed to make sure I wasn't pretending I hadn't said it. The morning after is where people usually start rewriting their own memories."
"You're not allowed to do that," he said. "I prefer the version where you call me a drama queen and fall asleep on my shoulder."
Color rose in her cheeks. "That was… a one‑off," she said.
"We'll see," he replied, tone neutral but eyes not.
She looked at the door. "We should probably pretend this didn't happen," she said. "At least… to the others."
"Because Mara will take your blood pressure and mine," he said.
"And Chris will look like someone shot his dog," she said, wincing. "He's already… intense."
"Chris will adjust," Arlo said. "He'll glower. He'll pace. He'll make snide comments about my life choices. But he'll adjust."
"Why are you so sure?" she asked.
"Because he wants you alive more than he wants me punished," Arlo said. "And he's not stupid. He knows you don't… lean on people lightly."
Her throat tightened around that.
"Is it terrible," she said slowly, "that I don't know how to tell him… any of this? That whatever I feel for you, whatever I'm starting to feel, feels like I'm betraying him and Berry and some version of myself that vowed to hate you forever?"
"No," Arlo said. "It's honest. And uncomfortable. Those two tend to travel together."
She absorbed that, fingers worrying the edge of the sheet.
"This doesn't fix anything," she said.
"I know," he said.
"It doesn't erase what you did," she added.
"I know," he repeated.
"It doesn't mean I won't wake up tomorrow and look at you and see the man who let my shop become a drop point," she pushed.
His jaw clenched, but he held her gaze. "I know," he said again.
"Then why are you still here?" she whispered.
"Because last night," he said quietly, "you put your hand on my face and fell asleep instead of running. And I decided that if you were going to make that kind of reckless choice, the least I could do was be here when you woke up,just in case you regretted it and needed someone to blame."
Her lips twitched. "You want credit for being my scapegoat now?"
"Yes," he said. "Desperately."
A knock at the half‑closed door cut through the moment.
"Ariel?" Chris's voice, tense. "You awake?"
She jolted slightly. Arlo's head tipped back, eyes closing for half a second in resignation.
"Showtime," he murmured.
She swallowed, heart kicking up.
"I'm here," she called, trying for casual and landing somewhere between guilty and sleepy.
The door pushed open another inch. Chris stepped in, words already forming. "Mara says—"
He stopped.
His gaze took in the scene in a single sweep: Ariel sitting on Arlo's bed, back against the headboard, hair mussed, shirt creased, Arlo a foot away, also on the bed, the air between them thick with something that was not strictly professional.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Chris's jaw worked.
"I knocked on your room," he said to Ariel, each word carefully neutral.
"I wasn't there," she said, stating the obvious because it was the only thing her brain could grab.
"So I gathered," he said.
A muscle in his cheek jumped. His eyes flicked to Arlo, then back to her.
Arlo didn't say anything. He didn't move closer or farther, didn't offer an explanation or an apology. He just met Chris's gaze and waited.
The air tightened.
Ariel's heart pounded. She could practically see the thoughts running behind Chris's eyes—every instinct to protect, every memory he couldn't share, every suspicion confirmed.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, grimacing as her side protested, and stood slowly.
"Before you say anything," she said, facing Chris fully, "I walked here. I knocked. I sat. I fell asleep. No one dragged me, no one manipulated me, and no one…" She gestured vaguely. "Did anything I need to punch them for."
Chris's gaze dropped to the way she was favoring one side. "You should be in bed," he said.
"I was," she said. "Different bed."
"That's the problem," he said tightly.
"Chris," Arlo said, tone a warning and a caution both.
Chris looked at him, something bright and dangerous in his eyes. "You don't get to say her name like that and expect me to nod along," he said.
"Good," Arlo replied. "I'd be disappointed if you did."
Ariel stepped between them,not physically blocking, but inserting herself into the line of tension.
"Whatever… this is," she said, gesturing between herself and Arlo, "it's mine. Not yours to approve. Not his to use. Mine. If you have a problem with that, you can aim it at me, not like I'm some helpless idiot he hypnotized with trauma and good cheekbones."
Chris blinked. "Good cheekbones?" he repeated.
"Don't make me repeat it," she muttered.
Some of the tightness around his mouth eased, but the hurt didn't.
"I'm not…" He exhaled, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I'm not angry at you," he said. "I'm scared for you. There's a difference."
"I know," she said softly.
"And I'm… not objective," he added, eyes flicking away.
"That's also obvious," Arlo said dryly.
Chris shot him a look. "You are not helping."
"Not trying to," Arlo said.
Ariel pinched the bridge of her nose. "Okay," she said. "New rule. No growling at each other within the first ten minutes of my morning. I don't have the emotional bandwidth."
"Technically, it's my morning too," Arlo said.
"Especially you," she said.
Chris's gaze returned to her, searching. "Are you okay?" he asked. Not just physically. All of it.
She thought about lying. About saying yes, fine, everything's great, please ignore the fact that I used Arlo's shoulder as a pillow.
"I'm… not worse," she said instead. "Yesterday, I thought I might crack open and never stop. Today, I'm… still here. That's the bar."
His shoulders dropped a fraction. "Okay," he said. "Then we work with that."
He jerked his chin toward the hallway. "Mara's making actual breakfast," he said. "She threatened violence if I let you near coffee without food again."
Ariel glanced back at Arlo. "You coming?" she asked.
"Eventually," he said. "If I walk into her kitchen before she's caffeinated, I might not walk out."
"That's fair," she said.
She moved toward the door, steps careful but more certain than yesterday's first try. Chris fell into step beside her, hovering close enough to catch, far enough not to crowd.
At the threshold, she paused and looked back.
Arlo sat on the edge of the bed, watching her go. In the pale light, he looked both more dangerous and more human than ever,like the choice she'd made in the middle of the night was going to matter in ways she couldn't yet see.
"Hey," she said.
He arched a brow.
"Thanks for… not moving," she said.
His mouth curved, small and wry. "Anytime," he said.
She rolled her eyes and stepped into the hall.
Chris waited until they were a few paces away before he spoke again, voice low.
"I'm still going to worry," he said.
"I'd be offended if you didn't," she replied.
"And I'm still going to have opinions about him," he added.
"I'd be suspicious if you didn't," she said. "Just… trust me a little, okay? I'm not sleepwalking through this."
His jaw worked. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Okay," he said. "I trust you. I don't trust him. That'll have to be enough for now."
"It is," she said.
Downstairs, the smell of coffee and toast met them,ordinary, welcome, absurd in its normalcy.
Behind them, upstairs, Arlo sat alone on the edge of his bed, staring at the dent her head had left in the pillow.
He'd held her through nightmares, watched her walk out, watched her choose to invite him into the mess of whatever came next.
For a man who'd spent years turning people into pieces on a board, the realization was almost dizzying:
For the first time in a long time, Arlo Johnson wasn't sure if he was the one doing the dangerous thing—
or if the girl with tear‑raw eyes and a stubborn heart was the one holding him over the fire and seeing what might burn away if he let her.
Either way, he stood, rolled his shoulders, and headed downstairs.
Breakfast, plans, buyers, revenge, ghosts, and the slow, impossible work of earning something that looked like a place in Ariel's future waited.
He'd survived worse mornings.
None that mattered this much.