บททั้งหมดของ SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS : บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

FLYNN'S POVDominic walked in three minutes early, which told me something.Not late, which would have been a power move. Not exactly on time either, which would have been neutral. Early, which meant he wanted to be settled before I arrived and found me already there instead. He stopped when he saw me at the corner table. Then he smiled like he had decided on the walk over here, how this meeting was going to go for him. He crossed the room and sat down without being invited to.His collar was open, he wore no jacket."Flynn," he said."Thanks for coming.""You said it was important." He picked up the menu, glanced at it and put it down. "You could have just called.""I wanted to see your face."The server came and we both ordered coffee. Neither of us touched the menus again after that.I reached into the folder I'd brought and placed the investigator's summary on the table between us. Flat. Dominic looked down at it. Then up at me. A small smile moved across his face, practiced and

ARIA'S POVHe burned his tongue on his coffee again this morning and said nothing about it.I watched it happen from across my kitchen counter. I've seen it four times now. He would never learn to not drink coffee that hot and he would never admit there was anything to learn. At some point I think he just liked the idea of it 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, and it took everything in me not to say something about how bad that is for the binding. I knew when he watched an action movie whenever 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 before he came back around.He knew thi

FLYNN'S POV"Every time I raise this," Dr. Wren said, "you give me a different explanation for the same behavior."She said it without accusation. That was her particular skill. She could put something sharp on the table and make it sound like simple observation, and then she would wait while you worked out for yourself that it had cut you.I'd been coming to this office for six weeks. The chair across from hers was a good chair, which I'd noticed the first session and thought about more than was probably reasonable since. The room was plain. A plant on the window ledge. No diplomas on the walls, which I'd respected immediately."What happens," she said, "if we stop explaining it?"The room was quiet.I'd given her the story of protecting Sienna as explanation. The Hale legal threat explanation, and the one about how three more weeks would have changed everything.She'd let me lie to her and myself throughout until today. She was looking at me with the particular patience of someone wh

ARIA'S POVSomeone knocked on my door while I was still in bed. I wasn't expecting anyone that was surprising. 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 penmanship. 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 was taken aback for a moment so I put the letter down on the counter but then I picked it up and read it from the beginning.She

ARIA'S POVThe gallery was mine on Thursday afternoons.Vincent had regular meetings from two to five, part of the work that came with running a serious gallery, and I had learned to protect those hours. No appointments, no unnecessary calls. Just me, the artwork, and the silence that filled the gallery between events, when the pieces on the walls seemed to settle into themselves and no longer needed to impress anyone.I was doing final placement checks for the show. We were 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 browsers, people killing time betwee