Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 53

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

KIERAN

The kitchen was quiet.

“And she got out of the car at a red light,” I said.

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“She got out of the car,” Jayce confirmed. “But Kieran-and I’m saying this because I’m your closest friend and it’s my job to say it- there is a possibility, a real one, that some part of what Denise is doing is about Dante. About hurting him back. About being the thing he can’t have.” He paused carefully. “You chose her. But are you certain she chose you for the right reasons? Or are you one of the reasons and Dante is the other one?”

I stood at the window with the coffee going cold in my hand.

It was not the first time this thought had moved through my mind. I had looked at it in Tokyo, at three in the morning, and set it aside without examining it. Jayce was giving it back to me now in the direct, undecorated way that he gave me things I needed to heartather than things I wanted to.

I thought about Denise at Seren, laying out what she wanted-the degree, the foundation, St. Mira’s, the name on something that was hers. The clarity of it, the absence of performance. I thought about her reading the legal documents twice with Adaeze Obi and requesting amendments before she signed. I thought about her standing on the Grand Aldric staircase in the Aura Phoenix and waving at Dante with a smile that knew exactly what it was doing, and then moving on to speak to my mother about her father’s ankle edema.

I thought about her on the pavement on Selborne Street. Standing still, waiting, already texting before I’d said I was coming.

“I hear you,” I said.

“But?” Jayce said.

“No but,” I said. “I hear you. It’s a real question and you’re right to ask it.” I paused. “I’m also not going to interrogate her about her reasons. If she’s here, she’s here. If something changes, it’ll show itself.”

“That’s very calm of you.”

“I’m a calm person.”

“You watched a police station footage clip eleven times in a Tokyo hotel room at three in the morning,” Jayce said. “You are not as calm about this as you’re representing.”

I said nothing.

“Be careful,” he said. Not as a warning exactly. As the thing a person said when they cared about the outcome. “That’s all I’m saying. Just be careful.”

“I will,” I said. “Talk tomorrow.”

I hung up and set the phone on the counter and looked at it for a moment.

Then I picked up both coffee cups-mine cold, hers unmade-and put mine in the sink and made a fresh one for when she came

1/31

1:25 pm P P P P

Chapter-53

out of the shower.

I set it on the counter where she’d see it.

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An hour later I went to check on/her.

The guest room door was slightly open, which it hadn’t been before. I pushed it gently.

She was asleep.

Fully dressed, on top of the covers, one arm folded under her pillow and the other at her side, her breathing the slow, deep rhythm of someone who had gone under quickly and completely. Her coat was folded on the chair. Her shoes were beside the bed. Her phone was face-down on the nightstand.

The coffee I’d made was on the counter where I’d left it, untouched.

I stood in the doorway for a moment.

The room was quiet and the light from the corridor was enough to see by without disturbing anything. She looked younger in sleep than she did awake-not in a way that was about age exactly, but the particular quality of a person when they’d set down everything they carried during the day and were simply resting.

She had been in Dante’s car today. He had offered her a private marriage certificate-the thing she’d asked for two years ago and been denied, now being tabled at the precise moment she was no longer available for it. She had gotten out at a red light.

She had sent me her location.

These were facts. I was going to treat them as facts and not as the beginning of a story I’d written myself, because writing stories about other people’s internal lives was how you missed what they were actually telling you.

I reached in and turned off the bedside lamp.

She didn’t stir.

I pulled the door to its previous position-slightly open, enough air-and went to my own room.

I showered. Changed. Sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the floor for a moment with the specific tiredness of a man who had been in several countries in seven days and had not, despite the tiredness, any difficulty identifying what the most important thing that had happened today was.

Jayce’s question was still present. I had heard it and I was keeping it, the way you kept things that were worth keeping-not to fester, not to become suspicion, but to inform the attention you paid to what was real versus what you were hoping was real.

The difference mattered.

I lay down.

The city outside was doing its late evening business, quieter than the afternoon but never quite silent. I looked at the ceiling.

She had gotten out of the car.

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