Page 67 of Captive

“I can write a receipt if you need more atmosphere.”

Two egg tacos, sealed salsa, coffee Becca hasn’t had a chance to weaponize. He sits where his right leg can stay straight. He doesn’t pick the chair facing the front door.

We eat first. I’ve learned enough about emergencies to respect calories, and enough about him to know that hunger is just one more fact he’ll call irrelevant.

“You slept at your place,” I say.

“You didn’t invite me to yours.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“No.” He turns the coffee cup in his hand. “I didn’t think I had the right to, yesterday. After the room. After saying it all out loud in front of you.”

“And today?”

“Today you sent a car.”

I put my taco down. “I watched you give up every key you had. I watched you say what you did to me on camera, in front of your family, and not ask me for anything after. And then I went home and the bed was too big.”

His mouth tightens, and he looks down at the table.

“You lost authority you used for nineteen years,” I say. “The review might cost you the job and the house. You walked away from Russell yesterday not knowing if Barbed Crown would keep you. How do you feel?”

He looks toward the window over my sink. He doesn’t check the latch.

“I don’t know who I am without the work,” he says.

It isn’t a demand. That makes it harder to brush off.

“I’m not going to answer that for you,” I say.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No. You just have a talent for making silence feel like homework.”

A dry line touches his mouth and goes away. “I’m trying to retire a few bad systems at once.”

I turn the employment order he left on my counter face down. “So if nobody gives you an order. What do you choose?”

He’s quiet so long the refrigerator cycles off. His thumbnail taps the paper cup. He isn’t stalling. He’s actually looking for the answer.

“I choose you,” he says. “I choose work that can survive being written down. If Barbed Crown can survive the truth, I choose the part of it that’s willing to change. If it can’t, I don’t choose what it was.”

The words sit in my kitchen like something alive.

“You might lose all three,” I say.

“Yes.”

“I’m not offering you a job, or a house, or a way to make your past useful.”

“I know.”

“What I’m offering is this morning.”

He meets my eyes. “Then I choose that too.”

“What was her name?” I ask. “Your mother.”