CHAPTER 4

The car had barely pulled out of the venue. Van's eye was fixed on me and I could see through the window that he was still fuming.

"Stay away from Leo." He said finally, his tone carrying a finality that suggested that he wasn't going to entertain an argument about it

I turned from the window slowly. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." His gaze shifted forward."Whatever that was tonight on that balcony—it musn't happen again."

"He was just talking to—."

"I know what Leo does and trust me, he wasn't just talking to you." His jaw tightened slightly. "Stay away from him."

"What is it to you? What makes you think you get to make that call?" I asked, my eyebrows raising.

" You're my wife. He paused for a moment as if he was being forced to say something he doesn't want to say. ”And Leo is my stepbrother."

The word landed like a punch to my guts, understanding dawning on me. I ran everything back again—Van appearing in that doorway and the cold look that passed between them—It all made sense now

"He didn't mention that," I said.

"That's what he does." His voice carried a sharper edge now. "He's a deceitful snake, Zara. Everything he does has a reason behind it. The charm, the conversation, all of it." He looked at me. "Stay clear of him."

I held his gaze for a moment.

"A deceitful snake," I said slowly. "That's rich, coming from you."

"Zara—”

"A

"No." I turned to face him fully. "You don't get to tell me who I can and can't talk to. I signed a contract, not a leash." I kept my voice level. "Whatever is going on between you and Leo — keep it there. Between the two of you. Don't make it my problem."

"It becomes your problem when he's using you to make it mine."

"Then deal with him." I turned back to the window. "I'm not a piece in whatever this is."

He said nothing after that.

The car pulled through the residence gates and I was out the door before it fully stopped.

---

I had assumed, reasonably, that a mansion with more rooms than I had bothered to count would have allocated me my own.

I had assumed wrong.

I stood in the doorway of Van's room with my clutch in my hand and looked at the space — enormous, immaculate, one bed in the center of it that was big enough to be its own country — and then at the couch along the far wall, and then back at Van who had walked in behind me and was already shrugging off his jacket like this was the most normal situation in the world.

"You're joking," I said.

"The other rooms aren't ready yet." He laid his jacket over the chair. "It's temporary."

"Everything about this is temporary."

He said nothing to that.

I dropped my clutch on the couch, sat down, and reached back to undo the clasp of my earrings while Van stood at the other side of the room and began unbuttoning his shirt. I looked away immediately. Looked at the far wall, at the window, at the ceiling, at anything that wasn't the unhurried movement of his fingers down the front of that shirt revealing the kind of chest that had absolutely no business looking like that when I was trying to maintain a very reasonable and well-justified hatred of the person it belonged to.

I focused very hard on removing my second earring.

"How long are you planning to sleep on that couch," he said.

"It's none of your business." I kicked off one shoe. It hit the floor with a satisfying sound. I kicked off the other and lay down and pulled the throw blanket from the back of the couch over me and stared at the ceiling. "Goodnight, Van."

A pause.

"The bed is large enough—"

"Goodnight."

Another pause. Longer this time.

Then the lamp on his side of the room clicked off.

---

I waited.

Forty minutes, maybe more, lying in the dark listening to the silence of the room settle into something steadier. The couch was not uncomfortable enough to complain about but not comfortable enough to sleep on without effort, and I lay there with the keychain in my palm and stared at the ceiling and waited until his breathing on the other side of the room slowed and deepened and evened out completely.

Then I slipped off the couch, crossed to the bathroom, closed the door softly behind me, and turned the shower on just enough to cover the sound.

I sat on the edge of the bath and dialled.

It rang twice.

"Mama?"

His voice came through small and thick with sleep and something in my chest unknotted completely without my permission.

"Hey, baby." I kept my voice low. "Did I wake you?"

"Mm." The rustling sound of blankets. "S'okay. I wasn't sleeping."

"You were absolutely sleeping."

"I was resting my eyes."

"Billy. Those are the same thing."

"Nope," he said, with the certainty of someone who had decided at some point that certainty was a personality worth committing to fully. I pressed my lips together.

"How was your day?" I asked.

He thought about it with the seriousness he applied to most things. "We made pasta. The shapes. And I named mine before I ate them."

"You named your pasta."

"The big ones. The little ones didn't get names."

"That's slightly dark."

"They were too small," he said, completely reasonable. "It wouldn't be fair to name something that small."

I pressed my hand over my mouth.

"Mama."

"I'm here, I'm here."

"When are you coming back?"

I looked at the bathroom tiles. At the thin line of steam rising from the shower. At the gap under the door and the dark room beyond it.

"Soon," I said. "I promise."

"You always say soon."

"Because I always mean it."

His breathing came slower now, sleep pulling at him in steady waves.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

Five years old and he asked me that. Had always asked me that, like he had arrived in this world already knowing his mother carried things she didn't always put down.

"I'm okay, baby. I just needed to hear your voice."

"Oh." A pause. "Okay." Softer now, already half under — "Love you, Mama."

"I love you more than everything."

He was gone before I finished the sentence.

I sat with the phone in my lap for a while after that and let the shower run and didn't think about anything at all.

---

The room was still and dark when I came back out.

I crossed to the couch carefully, lowered myself down, pulled the blanket back up. Van hadn't moved.

I was almost asleep when my phone lit up on the cushion beside me. A message from a contact saved under a name that meant nothing to anyone but me.

*Someone was in the neighbourhood today. Asking questions about the house. About who lives there. I don't know who sent them.*

*Be careful, Zara.*

I sat up slowly.

Across the room, Van's breathing stayed even and deep.

I read the message again.

Then I looked at the man sleeping ten feet away from me, at the dark shape of him against the white of the sheets, and I thought about what it would mean if he had sent them. How easily he could have. How thoroughly he had already proven that he planned everything further ahead than I could see.

I lay back down.

The keychain was in my hand so tightly its edges pressed into my palm.

I didn't sleep for a long time after that.