Cellie's POV
He arrived at seven exactly.
I had spent the three hours between his dropping me off and the knock at my door doing the things I did when I needed to keep my hands occupied while my mind worked — cleaning the apartment with the focused, methodical energy of someone who needed tasks with clear completion, reorganizing the bookshelf by color rather than author because it required enough visual attention to prevent me from sitting down and staring at the wall, watering the plant that was only slightly less dead than it had been last week. The apartment smelled faintly of the cleaning solution I'd used on the countertops, sharp and clean, and the last of the evening light was doing something quiet and orange through the kitchen window.
When the knock came I had been standing at the kitchen window for twenty minutes watching the street below without seeing it. My hands were around a mug of tea I had made and not drunk. The tea was cold.
I opened the door.
