Page 65 of Sexting His Assistant

Her expression closes at once. “Nothing.”

A poor lie. We both know it.

“Nina.”

“No,” she says. “You don’t get to ignore me all day, bleed on me in a garage, bring me to your giant murder mansion, and then ask questions like you’re entitled to every thought in my head.”

“Murder mansion?”

Her eyes flash. “That’s what you took from that sentence?”

“It’s just a large house.”

“It has a medical room behind a bookshelf.”

“For convenience.”

“For gunshot wounds.”

“For several kinds of wounds.”

“Do you hear yourself when you talk?”

Despite the pain, despite the blood loss, despite the fact that the day has fallen entirely into chaos, something inside me eases.

She’s angry. Anger means she’s not only afraid.

I look at her hands. They’re clean now, but not completely. A faint trace of blood remains near one fingernail.

My blood.

“You should not have seen any of this,” I say.

Something shifts across her face.

“No,” she says quietly. “Probably not.”

“And yet you’re still here.”

Her gaze drops to the floor. Sullen again. Hurt, maybe. Guarded in a way she was not this morning.

I hate not knowing what Misha said to her.

I hate more that I have no right to ask.

But I ask anyway.

“What did he say?” I repeat, softer this time.

She looks up. For a moment, she looks younger than she is. Not childish. Never that. But wounded in a way that reminds me of the girl who hated being left out of rooms she was too young to understand.

Then she says, “Ask him.”

I look toward the closed door, where Misha’s footsteps have already disappeared down the hall, and understand one thing with absolute clarity.

Whatever he said to her, it has placed him between us.

And for the first time in all the years I’ve known him, I’m not sure I’ll let him stay there.