Lahat ng Kabanata ng SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS : Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

FLYNN'S POVDominic Ashford walked in three minutes early, which told me something.Not late, which would have been a power move. Not exactly on time, which would have been neutral. Early, which meant he wanted to be settled before I arrived and found me already there instead. The kind of man who preferred to choose his seat. He stopped when he saw me at the corner table. Then he smiled with the ease of someone who had decided on the walk over how this meeting was going to go for him, and crossed the room and sat down without being invited to.Open collar. No jacket. The relaxed presentation of a man who wanted me to know he hadn't dressed up for this."Flynn," he said."Thanks for coming.""You said it was important." He picked up the menu, glanced at it, put it down. "You could have just called.""I wanted to see your face."The server came. We both ordered coffee. Neither of us touched the menus again.I reached into the folder I'd brought and placed the investigator's summary on

ARIA'S POVHe burned his tongue on his coffee again on Wednesday morning and said nothing about it.I watched it happen from across my kitchen counter. A sip too fast, the slight pause, the complete absence of any acknowledgment that it had occurred. I'd seen it four times now. He would never learn and he would never admit there was anything to learn and I had stopped finding it surprising and started finding it, without meaning to, quietly endearing.That was the thing about the last few weeks. The accumulation of small knowledge.I knew he read three books at the same time and left them face-down all over the place with their spines up, and it took everything in me not to say something about how bad that is for the binding. I knew when he picked an action movie he was dodging anything sad, though he’d never admit it if I asked straight out. I knew the look he got when work had worn him down, his shoulders are locked and still. I knew to give him exactly one drink’s worth of space be

POV: Aria “Feet down if you’re gonna make me nervous,” Dominic says, eyes flicking to my bare toes on the dash. I grin, wiggle them once and leave them right where they are. “You love it.” He huffs a laugh, the sound soft under the low thrum of my playlist. Dominic drove with one hand on the wheel while the other found my thigh, warm through my jeans, thumb resting easy like it has nowhere else to go. We’ve been driving for hours and I haven’t once checked my phone. No emails or texts. Just the road unwinding along the coast, cold gas station coffee in the cup holder, and the kind of quiet that feels earned. I tip my head back against the seat. “This was a good idea.” “You sound surprised.” “I didn’t overthink it. That’s the surprise.” He squeezes my leg once and doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to. The cabin waits at the end of a gravel lane, small and salt worn, porch facing straight out to the Pacific. No neighbors. No streetlights. Just the low growl

ARIA'S POVThe knock came while I was still in bed. I wasn't expecting anyone. I opened the door to find the building's mail carrier holding a stack of envelopes and a small package, apologizing for the late delivery, something about the route running long. I took everything, thanked him, and closed the door with my hip.Bills, A gallery catalogue, A reminder about renewing my renter's insurance.And then, at the bottom of the stack, a cream envelope with my name written in careful, deliberate cursive. No return address. Just a Portland postmark.I stood at my kitchen counter and opened it.Three pages. It was handwritten throughout. The same careful script on every line, unhurried, like the person writing it had sat down and taken all the time they needed.The name at the bottom of the third page was Sienna Thornfield.I put the letter down on the counter but then I picked it up and read it from the beginning.She wrote about coming to Portland. How she'd waited until her mother wa

ARIA'S POV The gallery was mine on Thursday afternoons. Vincent had standing meetings from two to five, the administrative machinery of running a serious gallery, and I'd learned to protect that window fiercely. No appointments, no calls I didn't have to take. Just me, the work and the particular quality of silence that lived in a gallery between events, when the pieces on the walls settled back into themselves and stopped performing for anyone. I was doing final placement checks for the show. Four weeks out now. Clara had approved the sequence two days ago and I'd spent this afternoon measuring sight lines, checking the spacing between pieces, making sure the conversation between them worked in the actual physical space the way it had in my head. The large canvas was going on the north wall. I'd known that from the beginning. Everything else arranged itself in relation to it. I heard the door. I didn't look up immediately. Walk ins on Thursday afternoons were usually brows