Page 125 of Unmanageable

He flashes a grin over his shoulder before heading down the corridor, leaving the room quiet again, save for the hum of the overhead heaters and the lingering warmth of him sitting right here beside me.

35

Finny

We’re in Denver. The final stop.

“Turn right at the next light,” Scottie says. “It’s up in the hills. A residential street.”

“No motels?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the GPS, which is currently screaming at us to make a U-turn.

“No motels,” she says, looking straight ahead at the asphalt. “I used the agency card. We have a corporate apartment for thirty-six hours.”

When I kill the ignition, the silence that settles over the vintage van is heavy—suffocating, almost. No highway rumble, no rattling engine, no vibration from the rear deck.

Inside, the loft is a masterclass in modern minimalism. The floor is polished gray concrete that shows the white dust from our sneakers, and the kitchen is a vast expanse of marble and stainless steel appliances that look like they’ve never been touched by human hands.

It’s beautiful, it’s cold, and it looks like a stage set for a life neither of us actually owns.

Scottie drops her leather planner onto the kitchen island with a thud that echoes off the high ceilings. She stands there for a second, her hands flat against the stone, looking out the massive glass wall toward the hazy sprawl of the city below.

“It’s huge,” she whispers.

“It’s ridiculous,” I say, walking up behind her and dropping our duffel bags onto the floor near the edge of the bed. I look at the massive six-burner stove. “We don’t even know how to turn that thing on. I’m pretty sure if I touch it, an alarm goes off in Zurich.”

She turns around, a small, nervous smile breaking through her professional veneer. “The fridge is already stocked. The agency handles the concierge service for these places. We’re going to cook something that doesn’t come out of a microwave at a gas station.”

Without the physical barrier of the front seats or the separate rooms of the cheap highway motels, everything we do is exposed.

We start pulling things from the sub-zero refrigerator, our shoulders brushing every time we reach for a vegetable or a block of cheese.

We move around the small perimeter of the kitchen island, arguing over the ingredients—should we roast the peppers or sauté them?—like we’ve done this every Tuesday for five years.

It’s domestic. It’s cozy, it’s small, it’s stupid, and it terrifies me so deeply my fingers are actually sweating against the handle of the vegetable crisper.

I look down at her while she’s inspecting a bunch of basil, her thumb rubbing the green leaves to catch the scent, her brow furrowed in deep, unnecessary concentration.

I love her.

The thought hits me with the force of a body check into the boards.

I’ve loved her since the second week in the van, maybe since the moment I saw her all those years ago, but the word is too big for the space we’ve been living in.

If I say it now, everything we built on the highway might just evaporate.

Tomorrow, I tell myself, watching the way her mouth moves along to the song playing on her phone. Tomorrow. I’ll say it then.

She’s chopping tomatoes for a sauce, her face serious, her tongue tucked into the corner of her mouth the way it goes when she’s reading a three-page waiver.

The domesticity of the whole thing is pressing down on my chest until I can’t breathe.

We’re pretending. We’re playing house in a luxury room, and the sight of her standing there, working around my life like she belongs in it, makes something wild break loose behind my ribs.

I walk up behind her, my bare feet silent on the concrete floor. She doesn’t hear me until my chest presses against her back, the heat of my skin cutting through her white shirt.

She freezes, the knife hovering an inch above a tomato.

“Cash,” she whispers, her breath catching.