Chapter Three

 Aria

I typed back immediately. Like an idiot.

That’s creepy. That’s actually creepy and you know it.

Then 

Is it.

Not a question. A statement. The kind that sits in your chest and makes you feel things you shouldn’t.

I locked my phone and threw it onto the cushion beside me and pressed my face into my hands and just sat there for a while doing absolutely nothing constructive. Outside the birds were doing their morning thing, completely unbothered, living their best uncomplicated lives. Must be nice. Must be genuinely lovely to be a bird right now.

I picked my phone back up.

Stop texting me.

You texted me first.

You started it.

Careful, Aria. You sound like a child.

I nearly launched the phone across the room.

I spent the rest of the morning doing everything I could to stop thinking about him. I went for a run three miles through the neighborhood with my headphones in and my playlist on full volume, pounding the pavement like it had personally offended me. I showered. I reorganized my suitcase. I called Leah and talked for forty minutes about absolutely nothing meaningful because I couldn’t exactly say hey so my stepfather is texting me things that make my thighs clench, how’s your Tuesday going.

It didn’t help.

Nothing helped.

By afternoon I was sitting at the kitchen island with my laptop, curriculum vitae open on the screen, trying to remember what I was actually supposed to be doing with my life. Job applications. That was the plan. Get a job, get an apartment, get out of this house before I did something catastrophically stupid.

I was deep in a cover letter when I heard the front door.

My stomach did the thing. The involuntary, humiliating thing.

He walked into the kitchen still in his suit, jacket over one arm, tie loosened just slightly at the collar. He looked like he’d spent the day running a small country and found it mildly inconvenient. He set his keys down, opened the fridge, pulled out a bottle of water.

Didn’t look at me.

Didn’t say anything.

I stared at my screen.

“How was your meeting,” I said, because apparently I was a person who made small talk with men who sent unsettling texts and then pretended they didn’t.

“Productive.” He leaned against the counter and drank his water and looked at my screen. “Cover letter?”

“Job applications.”

“For what.”

“Anything that pays and isn’t here.”

Silence. Then “You’re not staying?”

I looked up. He was watching me with that steady, dark attention, water bottle loose in his hand, expression giving me exactly nothing.

“That was always the plan,” I said. “Three months, maybe four. Then I find something and move out.”

Something moved in his jaw. Barely. Gone before I could name it.

“Smart,” he said.

He pushed off the counter and walked out of the kitchen and I sat there staring at my cover letter thinking about the word smart and the way his jaw moved and genuinely considering whether I needed therapy.

My mother came home at six in a spectacular mood, poured wine for all three of us before anyone asked, and announced over dinner that she’d landed the Eden Prairie project and wanted to celebrate this weekend with the Hendersons and the Moores at some rooftop event downtown.

“You should come, Aria,” she said, beaming.

“I don’t think—”

“She’ll come,” Caden said.

I turned to look at him. He was cutting his steak, not looking at me, completely casual about the fact that he’d just answered for me like that was something he got to do.

“I can answer for myself,” I said.

He looked up. Slow. “I know.”

“So why”

“Because you were going to say no and you have no good reason to.” Calm. Matter of fact. Infuriating.

My mother looked between us with a small, delighted smile like she thought this was adorable sibling bickering energy. It was not that. It was absolutely not that.

“Fine,” I said tightly.

He went back to his steak.

I drank half my wine in one go and my mother started talking about the venue and I sat there with my blood running hot and the deeply unsettling realization that I didn’t actually mind him speaking for me half as much as I should have.

That terrified me more than anything.

I was in the bath at nine when my phone buzzed on the edge of the tub.

Unknown number.

Of course.

What are you doing.

I stared at the ceiling for a second. Warm water, lavender, the sound of the house settling around me. I should not respond. I knew that. Every single reasonable part of me knew that.

Taking a bath. Why.

Dots. A long pause. Then 

Don’t answer that.

My heart rate picked up.

You brought it up.

I’m ending this conversation.

You do that a lot. Start something and then walk away.

Another pause. Longer this time.

You have no idea what you’re doing.

I sat up in the bath, water shifting around me, and typed back before I could stop myself.

Then tell me.

Nothing.

A minute passed. Two. I sat there in the cooling water with my pulse loud in my ears staring at the screen like an absolute fool waiting for a man who was probably sitting in his office twenty feet away pretending to be composed.

Then my phone rang.

Not a text. A call.

Unknown number, buzzing in my wet hand, and I answered it without thinking because of course I did, because apparently I had a death wish.

Silence on the other end. Just breathing. Low and steady.

Then his voice, quieter than usual, rough at the edges in a way that went straight through me.

“Get out of the bath, Aria.”

Oh God.

“Caden—”

“Get out. Dry off. Go to your room and lock the door.”

My mouth went dry. “Why.”

A pause that lasted just long enough to make my whole body tight.

“Because I know you’re in there.” Low. Controlled. Like he was holding something back with both hands. “And I know exactly what you look like and I’ve been sitting outside this door for the last ten minutes telling myself to walk away.”

The bath water had gone completely cold.

I couldn’t speak.

“Lock the door, Aria.” His voice dropped another register, rough and quiet and wrecked in a way I’d never heard from him. “Because if you don’t, I’m going to stop being good.”

The call ended.

I sat frozen in the cold water, heart slamming, skin flushed hot despite the temperature, thighs pressing together under the surface like that would do anything.

I got out.

Dried off with shaking hands.

Wrapped myself in a towel and stood in the middle of the bathroom floor listening.

Silence in the hallway.

I walked to the door. Pressed my palm flat against it.

And from the other side, so quiet I almost missed it — one slow exhale.

He was still there.

I reached for the lock.

And turned it.