Unwritten Horizon

The first thing I ever stole from a man was his watch, and I did it while he was looking at me.

Not at my hands. At my face. That's the part I want you to understand before anything else, because everything that came after, the whole wreck and ruin of it, the way I stopped being able to sleep in my own bed without hearing his voice, all of it grows from that one fact. He was looking at my face. And I took the watch anyway.

I was twenty-three and I had a system. Systems are what you build when you don't have a mother to call and you've decided that's fine, that's actually preferable, thank you. My system ran on three rules and I could recite them the way other people recite prayers.

Rule one: never work a man who's already drunk. Drunk men are unpredictable. They either don't notice or they notice too much, and there's no way to know which until your fingers are already in their pocket.

Rule two: always have an exit you've walked twice before.

Rule three, the one that kept me fed and free and alive: never, ever look at their eyes. Eyes make men into people. You see a person, you start to feel like a person, and a person with a conscience is a person with nothing.

I broke rule three on a Thursday in October, at a bar called The Sinkhole, which was exactly as glamorous as it sounds. Low ceiling, sticky floor, a jukebox that only played songs about leaving. The kind of place where the beer was cheap and the women were cheaper and everybody knew it and nobody said it.

I'd been watching him for forty minutes.

He wasn't the mark I'd come for. The mark I'd come for was a real estate developer named Gerald who wore a wedding ring he kept twisting like it itched, and who'd had four whiskey sodas and was telling anyone within earshot about a property he was about to flip in the Keys. Gerald was easy money. Gerald was practically a charity case, the way he kept patting his jacket pocket to make sure his wallet was still there, which meant he'd already lost it twice in his life and learned the wrong lesson from it.

But then the man at the end of the bar looked up from his book.

A book. In The Sinkhole. That alone would've caught my attention, because nobody reads in a place like that unless they're hiding from something. But it wasn't the book that stopped me. It was the way he turned the page. Slow. Deliberate. Like he had all the time in the world and wasn't in any hurry to spend it.

He was older. Mid-forties, maybe. Dark hair going silver at the temples, the kind of silver that looks intentional, like he'd paid for it. A suit that had never seen the inside of a discount rack. Hands that were doing nothing but holding a book, and doing it with a stillness that made me want to know what they'd look like doing something else.

I told myself I was scouting. Expanding the operation. That's what I told myself.

Then he looked up.

Not at the room. Not at the door. At me.

I don't know how he found me in that crowd. I was in the corner, half behind a pillar, doing what I do, which is to be invisible in plain sight. But his eyes landed on me like he'd known the coordinates all along. Dark eyes. Patient eyes. The kind that don't blink first.

And I looked back.

Rule three, gone. Just like that. Twenty-three years of discipline, undone by a stranger with a book and a jawline that could cut glass.

The thing is, I've spent my whole life reading people. It's the job. You learn to see the tells, the twitches, the way a man's throat moves when he's lying, the way his eyes slide left when he's about to do something stupid. I can read a room in three seconds flat. It's a gift. It's also a curse, because it means I see everything, and most of what I see is ugly.

But I couldn't read him.

That's what got me. Not the suit, not the silver, not the stillness. The blankness. He was a page I couldn't turn. A lock without a keyhole. And in my line of work, that's not just inconvenient. That's dangerous.

I should've walked out. I know that now. I knew it then, too, if I'm being honest, which I try not to be. But Gerald was still yammering about his property, and the bartender was pouring another round, and the man with the book had gone back to reading like nothing had happened, like he hadn't just reached across forty feet of smoke and noise and put his hand on the back of my neck without moving a muscle.

So I did what I always do. I worked the room.

I let Gerald buy me a drink I didn't drink. I laughed at a joke I didn't hear. I let my hand brush his arm, his shoulder, the inside of his wrist, mapping the terrain. His wallet was in the left jacket pocket. His phone was in the right. His keys were in his pants, which was annoying, but I didn't need his keys. I needed the cash and the cards, and I needed to be gone before he noticed either was missing.

The man with the book turned another page.

I felt it. That's the only way I can describe it. Felt the page turn, the way you feel someone watching you from across a room even when your back is turned. He wasn't looking at me. I checked. Twice. But I felt him anyway, the way you feel a storm before it breaks.

Gerald leaned in. His breath was whiskey and regret. "You're the prettiest thing I've seen all week," he said, which was a lie, because Gerald had been in Miami for three days and Miami is full of pretty things, most of them better looking than me and all of them more expensive.

"You're sweet," I said, which was also a lie, and I slid my hand into his jacket pocket like it belonged there.

His wallet was fat. Stupid fat. The kind of fat that comes from carrying around cash you don't need because it makes you feel like a man. I palmed the bills, left the cards, because cards are traceable and I'm not an idiot, and I was already planning my exit, the side door by the bathrooms, the alley that ran behind the kitchen, the street that would take me to the bus stop where I'd change jackets and become someone else.

And then the man with the book closed it.

The sound was soft. A whisper of paper and glue. But it cut through the bar like a gunshot, at least to me, and I froze with my hand still in Gerald's pocket like a child caught in a cookie jar.

He stood up. Slow. Unhurried. He left a bill on the bar, more than enough to cover whatever he'd been drinking, and he walked toward me.

Gerald was still talking. Gerald had no idea his wallet was lighter and his night was about to get worse. Gerald was a footnote. I couldn't have told you his last name if you'd offered me money.

The man stopped three feet away. Close enough that I could smell him, which is a thing I notice, because smell is the hardest thing to fake and the easiest thing to remember. He smelled like cedar and something sharper underneath, like the air before a storm. Like ozone.

"You're going to want to put that back," he said.

His voice was low. Not loud. He didn't need to be loud. It was the kind of voice that made you lean in even when you didn't want to, that made you listen even when you'd already decided not to.

I took my hand out of Gerald's pocket. Slowly. I was still holding the cash. I didn't put it back.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"You do." He tilted his head. Not aggressive. Curious. Like I was a puzzle he was looking forward to solving. "The question is whether you're going to make this easy or hard. I'm hoping for hard, personally. Easy is boring."

Gerald, finally, noticed there was someone else in the conversation. "Hey," he said, "do I know you?"

"No," the man said, without looking at him. "You should go home. You've had enough."

"I've had enough when I say I've had enough," Gerald said, which was the most backbone he'd shown all night, and I almost respected him for it.

The man reached into his own pocket and pulled out a phone. Not a wallet. A phone. He held it up so Gerald could see the screen, and whatever was on it made Gerald go pale, made him stand up so fast he knocked his stool over, made him mutter something about remembering he had an early meeting and stumble toward the door without a backward glance.

I watched him go. I watched the door swing shut behind him. I watched my exit disappear.

"What was on the phone?" I asked.

"His wife's number," the man said. "And a photograph. He's been a very bad boy. She's been a very patient woman. Until now."

"You know his wife?"

"I know a lot of people." He put the phone away. "You didn't answer my question."

"You didn't ask one."

"I asked whether you're going to make this easy or hard." He smiled. It was a small smile, barely a twitch of the mouth, but it changed his whole face. Made him look younger. Made him look like someone who might have been fun, once, before whatever happened to him happened. "You're making it hard. I appreciate that."

I should've run. I want to be clear about that. Every instinct I had, every lesson I'd learned, every scar on my body from the times I didn't listen to those instincts, was screaming at me to run. But I didn't. I stood there with a dead man's cash in my fist and I looked at him, really looked at him, and I felt something I hadn't felt in years.

Curiosity. Plain, stupid, dangerous curiosity.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Buy me a drink and I'll tell you."

"I don't buy drinks."

"Then I'll buy you one." He gestured to the bar. "Unless you'd rather stand here all night holding money that isn't yours."

I looked down at my hand. The bills were crumpled, sweaty. Fifty-dollar bills, I realized. Gerald had been carrying around fifty-dollar bills like they were nothing. I shoved them in my pocket.

"Fine," I said. "One drink."

"One drink," he agreed.

His name was Elias. He told me that much, and not much else, over a glass of whiskey he didn't drink and a glass of wine I didn't drink, because we both knew the drinks were just props. The bar had emptied out around us, the way bars do when the night gets late and the people who are supposed to be somewhere else finally go there. The jukebox had cycled through its sad songs and settled into silence. The bartender was wiping down the same stretch of counter like he was trying to erase it from existence.

"You're a thief," Elias said.

"I'm a collector."

"That's a nice word for it."

"I like nice words." I turned my glass, watched the wine climb the sides. "What are you?"

"A lot of things." He leaned back on his stool, and the movement made his jacket fall open, and I saw the watch for the first time. Silver. Old. The kind of watch that didn't need to announce itself because it knew exactly what it was worth. "A businessman. A problem-solver. A man who's been watching you for three weeks."

My heart did something complicated. "Three weeks."

"You work the circuit. The Sinkhole on Thursdays. The Blue Room on Fridays. That wine bar on the beach on Saturdays, the one with the terrible acoustics." He recited it like a shopping list. "You're good. You're very good. But you're not invisible, and you're not careful, and if I were a different kind of man, you'd be in a lot of trouble right now."

"If you were a different kind of man, I'd have seen you coming."

"You didn't see me coming." He said it without pride, without smugness. Just a fact. "You saw me reading. There's a difference."

I hated that he was right. I hated that he knew he was right. I hated the way he was looking at me, like I was a book he'd already read and was waiting for me to catch up to the ending.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I want to make you an offer."

"I don't do offers."

"Then consider it a proposition." He reached into his jacket, and I tensed, because I've been on the wrong end of a reach before, and he noticed. He noticed everything. He slowed down, made his movements deliberate, and pulled out a business card. Plain white. No logo. Just a phone number and a name.

Elias Vance.

"I have a problem," he said. "Someone stole something from me. Something I want back. The police are useless, and the people I usually hire for this kind of thing are... let's say they lack a certain finesse." He slid the card across the bar. "You have finesse."

"You want to hire me."

"I want to pay you. Very well. To do what you already do, but for me instead of against me."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I finish my drink and I walk out of here and you never see me again." He picked up his whiskey, finally, and took a sip. His throat moved when he swallowed. "But you won't say no."

"You're pretty sure of yourself."

"I'm pretty sure of you." He set the glass down. "You're curious. You've been curious since I looked up from my book. And you're smart enough to know that curiosity is the only thing in this world that's ever going to get you out of this life, because it's the only thing that's ever going to make you want to leave it."

I should've said no. I should've taken the card and thrown it in the trash and walked out and never thought about him again. That's what a smart woman would've done. That's what the woman I'd been pretending to be for the past five years would've done.

But I wasn't that woman anymore. I don't know when I stopped being her. Maybe when he looked up from his book. Maybe when he said my name, my real name, not the name I'd been using, and I didn't flinch.

"You know who I am," I said.

"I know what you've done." He finished his whiskey. "I don't know who you are. That's the part I'm looking forward to finding out."

He stood up. He left another bill on the bar, and this time I saw the denomination, and it was more than I made in a month. He buttoned his jacket, and the watch disappeared, and he looked down at me with those patient eyes.

"Think about it," he said. "Don't take too long."

And then he was gone, and I was alone in The Sinkhole with a dead man's cash and a business card and the feeling that something had just started that I couldn't stop.

I didn't go home that night. I never go home after a job, not right away, because home is the first place they look. I went to a diner on Biscayne that stayed open all night and served coffee that tasted like burnt regret, and I sat in a booth in the back and I stared at the card.

Elias Vance.

The name meant nothing to me. That was the problem. I know the names. I know the players, the fixers, the men who run things from the shadows and the men who run things in the light. I've spent years mapping the city's underbelly, and I'd never heard of Elias Vance.

Which meant he was either nobody, or he was the kind of somebody who didn't need to be known.

I ordered a second coffee. I thought about Gerald, about the look on his face when Elias showed him whatever was on that phone. I thought about the way Elias had known I'd been watching him for forty minutes. I thought about the watch, the way it had caught the light, the way it had looked on his wrist like it had always been there.

And I thought about his hands. The stillness of them. The way they held the book. The way they'd held the whiskey. The way they'd slid the card across the bar like he was dealing me into a game I didn't know the rules of.

I wanted to know the rules.

That's the thing about me. That's always been the thing about me. I can resist a lot of things. Money. Danger. Men with kind eyes and soft voices. But I've never been able to resist a puzzle. And Elias Vance was the biggest puzzle I'd ever seen.

I called the number at four in the morning.

He answered on the second ring, like he'd been waiting. Maybe he had. Maybe he'd been sitting in some apartment I couldn't picture, in some part of the city I'd never been, with his phone in his hand and that small smile on his face.

"I was wondering when you'd call," he said.

"I haven't said yes."

"You called at four in the morning. That's not a no."

I closed my eyes. The diner was empty except for a cook who was watching a small television behind the counter, and the sound of it was just static, just noise, just the world going on without me.

"Tell me what you want me to steal," I said.

And he told me.

The thing he wanted back was a painting. A small one, he said, no bigger than a dinner plate, and worth more than everything I'd ever stolen in my life combined. It had been taken from his apartment three weeks ago, while he was out of town, and he knew who'd taken it and he knew where it was and he needed someone to get it back without making a scene.

"Why not just take it back yourself?" I asked.

"Because the person who took it is expecting me. They're not expecting you."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's supposed to make you feel necessary." A pause. "You are necessary. That's not a word I use lightly."

I should've asked more questions. I should've asked why he didn't go to the police, why he didn't hire someone with a gun and a badge, why he'd spent three weeks watching me work the circuit instead of finding someone who didn't need to be watched. But I was tired, and I was curious, and the two together are a combination that's gotten me into more trouble than I care to remember.

"Where do I find it?" I asked.

He told me. An address in Coral Gables. A house that belonged to a man named Vincent Rourke, who ran a gallery that was a front for something Elias didn't specify, and who'd been stupid enough to think he could take something from Elias Vance and keep it.

"Rourke's having a party on Saturday," Elias said. "Black tie. Lots of people. You'll blend in."

"I don't own anything black tie."

"Check your closet."

I opened my mouth to tell him he was crazy, that I'd never met him before tonight, that there was no way he knew what was in my closet. And then I remembered the way he'd looked at me across the bar. The way he'd said my name. The way he'd known things about me that I'd never told anyone.

"You've been in my apartment," I said.

"I've been in your life," he said. "There's a difference."

The line went dead.

I sat in the diner for another hour, watching the sky turn from black to gray to something that might have been blue if you squinted. The cook changed the channel on the television. The coffee in my cup went cold. And I thought about the painting, and the party, and the man with the patient eyes who'd been in my life for three weeks without me knowing it.

I should've been scared. I was scared. But underneath the fear was something else, something I hadn't felt in so long I almost didn't recognize it.

I was excited.

I went home. I walked the long way, the way I always do, checking my tail and doubling back and making sure no one was following me. The streets were empty except for the usual creatures of the early morning, the delivery trucks and the street sweepers and the men who'd been out all night and were just now stumbling home. Miami in October is still hot, still sticky, still the kind of place that makes you feel like you're wearing someone else's skin. I've lived here my whole life and I still don't know if I love it or hate it.

My apartment was on the fourth floor of a building that had seen better days and better tenants. Two rooms and a kitchen that was really just a stove and a sink. A window that looked out on an alley. A bed that I'd bought secondhand and never bothered to make. The kind of place that says I'm not staying long, which is what I've been telling myself for five years.

I checked the closet.

There was a dress hanging in the back, behind the jackets I never wore and the boots I never cleaned. Black. Silk. Cut in a way that would show every curve and hide every weapon, which is a neat trick if you can pull it off. I'd never seen it before. I'd never bought it. But it was my size, exactly my size, and there was a note pinned to the hanger in handwriting I didn't recognize.

Wear this. Leave your phone at home. I'll find you.

I sat down on the floor of my closet and I laughed. I laughed until my stomach hurt and my eyes watered and I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed like that. It wasn't a happy laugh. It was the laugh of someone who's just realized they've been playing checkers while someone else has been playing chess.

He'd been in my apartment. He'd been in my closet. He'd known my name and my circuit and my size. And I'd never seen him coming.

I should've called the whole thing off. I should've packed a bag and left the city and changed my name again and started over somewhere new, somewhere no one had ever heard of Elias Vance. That's what a smart woman would've done.

But I've never been a smart woman. I've been a careful woman, which is different. Careful is about surviving. Smart is about knowing when to stop. And I'd stopped being smart a long time ago, the night my mother left and I decided I'd never need anyone again.

I hung the dress on the back of my bedroom door. I took a shower. I went to bed.

And I dreamed about his hands.

Saturday came faster than it should have. I spent the week doing what I always do, working the circuit, taking what I could, keeping my head down. But everything felt different. The marks felt smaller. The nights felt longer. And every time I looked over my shoulder, I half expected to see him, standing in the shadows with his book and his patience and his eyes that saw everything.

I didn't see him. But I felt him. The way you feel a storm before it breaks.

The party was in a house that looked like it had been built by someone who'd never been told no. White walls. Marble floors. A fountain in the foyer that was probably worth more than my entire building. The kind of place that made you want to steal something just to prove you could.

I wore the dress. It fit like it had been made for me, which it probably had. I left my phone at home. I walked through the front door like I belonged there, because that's the secret, that's always been the secret. Act like you belong and people will believe you. Act like you're supposed to be there and no one will ask why you are.

The party was full of people who'd never worked a day in their lives. Women in diamonds. Men in watches that cost more than cars. The air was thick with perfume and champagne and the particular desperation of people who've run out of things to want.

I moved through the crowd like water. I smiled at the right people. I laughed at the right jokes. I found the stairs and I climbed them, and no one stopped me, because no one ever stops a woman in a black dress who looks like she knows where she's going.

The painting was in a study on the second floor. Small. Smaller than I'd expected. A portrait of a woman with dark hair and dark eyes and a smile that didn't reach her face. I stood in front of it for a long moment, and I felt something I couldn't name, something that felt like recognition.

I reached for it.

And a hand closed around my wrist.

Not hard. Not painful. Just there, like it had always been there, like it had been waiting for me to reach for the wrong thing so it could remind me of the rules.

"You're early," Elias said.

I turned around. He was wearing a tuxedo, which shouldn't have been fair, because no one looks good in a tuxedo, that's the whole point of a tuxedo, it makes everyone look the same. But he didn't look the same. He looked like he'd been born in it. He looked like he'd been waiting for me in it, in this room, in front of this painting, for longer than I'd been alive.

"You said Saturday," I said. "It's Saturday."

"I said the party was Saturday. I didn't say you should come early." He let go of my wrist. Slowly. His fingers trailed across my palm, and I felt it everywhere, a line of heat that went from my hand to my chest to somewhere lower. "You're not very good at following instructions."

"I'm not very good at following anything."

"I noticed." He stepped back. He looked at the painting, then at me, then back at the painting. "What do you see?"

"A woman."

"Look closer."

I looked. The woman in the painting had my face. Not exactly. The jaw was different, the nose was different, the eyes were darker. But the expression was mine. The wariness. The calculation. The look of someone who's spent her whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Who is she?" I asked.

"My wife." He said it without emotion, like he was reading from a file. "She died six years ago. This is the only painting she ever sat for. I've been looking for it for three years."

"Rourke took it?"

"Rourke took it." He reached past me, and his arm brushed my shoulder, and I felt the heat of him through the silk of my dress. He lifted the painting off its hook. He held it like it was made of glass, like it might shatter if he breathed too hard. "And now I have it back."

"You didn't need me." The words came out before I could stop them. "You could've taken it yourself. You could've sent anyone. Why me?"

He looked at me. For a long moment, he didn't say anything. And in that silence, I heard the party going on below us, the laughter and the music and the clink of glasses, all of it muffled, all of it far away, like it was happening in another world.

"Because you're the first person I've wanted to look at in six years," he said. "And I wanted to see what you'd do."

I should've slapped him. I should've walked out. I should've done any of the hundred things a smart woman would've done. But I didn't. I stood there in a dress he'd bought me, in a house that belonged to a man I'd never met, and I looked at Elias Vance, and I felt the floor drop out from under me.

"Take me home," I said.

He did.

His apartment was nothing like I'd expected. I'd pictured something cold. Something modern. Something with white walls and sharp edges and no sign that anyone actually lived there. But his apartment was warm. Cluttered. Books everywhere, on shelves and tables and stacked on the floor. A record player in the corner. A kitchen that smelled like coffee and cardamom. A window that looked out on the bay, where the lights of the city floated on the water like they were drowning.

He put the painting on the mantel. He poured two glasses of wine. He sat down on the couch and looked at me, and I stood in the middle of his living room and felt more exposed than I'd ever felt in my life.

"Why me?" I asked again.

"Because you're not afraid of me." He sipped his wine. "Everyone's afraid of me. You're not."

"I'm terrified of you."

"No, you're not." He set the glass down. "You're terrified of what you want. That's different."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him he didn't know me, didn't know anything about me, didn't have the right to look at me like that, like he could see through my skin to the soft parts underneath. But he did know me. That was the problem. He'd been watching me for three weeks. He'd been in my apartment. He'd bought me a dress that fit like it had been made for me.

"You've been in my life," I said, echoing his words from the diner.

"I've been in your life," he agreed. "And now you're in mine. That's how it works."

"How what works?"

"This." He gestured between us. "Whatever this is. I don't know what to call it. I've been trying to find a word for it since the first night I saw you, and I can't. So I've stopped trying."

I walked toward him. I don't know why. I don't know what I was thinking. I just knew that I couldn't stand on the other side of the room anymore, couldn't stand the distance between us, couldn't stand the way he was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world worth looking at.

I sat down next to him. Close. Close enough that I could smell him, cedar and ozone, the same as before. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him, the weight of him, the stillness that was always there, waiting.

"I don't do this," I said.

"Neither do I."

"I don't know you."

"You know enough." He reached out. He touched my face, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw, and I closed my eyes because I couldn't look at him anymore, couldn't look at the patient eyes and the silver temples and the mouth that was always on the edge of a smile. "You know the parts that matter."

"What parts?"

"The parts that make you want to stay."

I opened my eyes. He was closer now. Close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his irises, the small scar on his chin, the way his breath caught when I leaned in.

"I should go," I said.

"You should stay."

"I should go."

"Stay."

And I stayed.

The kiss was slow. Slower than I expected. He kissed like he did everything else, deliberately, patiently, like he had all the time in the world and wasn't in any hurry to spend it. His hands moved through my hair, down my back, along the zipper of the dress he'd bought me. He pulled it down, inch by inch, and I felt the silk slide off my shoulders, and I felt his mouth on my neck, and I felt something open inside me that I'd kept closed for years.

"I've wanted this," he said, against my skin. "Since the first night. Since I saw you take that watch."

"I didn't take the watch."

"You were going to." He pulled back. He looked at me. His eyes were dark, darker than before, and there was something in them that I recognized, something hungry and patient and absolutely certain. "You were going to take it, and then you looked at me, and you stopped."

"I don't remember stopping."

"You stopped." He kissed me again. Softer this time. "That's how I knew."

"Knew what?"

"That you were the one."

The words should've scared me. They did scare me. But they also did something else, something I couldn't name, something that felt like falling and flying at the same time. I pulled him closer. I pulled the tuxedo jacket off his shoulders. I unbuttoned his shirt, slowly, the way he'd unzipped my dress, and I felt his heart beating under my hand, steady and strong and real.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"I want you to stop talking."

He laughed. It was the first time I'd heard him laugh, and it changed his face, made him look younger, made him look like someone who might have been happy once, before whatever happened to him happened.

"I can do that," he said.

And he did.

The night was long. Longer than I expected. I won't tell you everything, because some things aren't for telling, and because I'm not the kind of woman who kisses and tells. But I'll tell you this. I'll tell you that I've been with men before, a lot of men, men whose names I never learned and whose faces I forgot before they left the room. I've been with men who wanted my body and men who wanted my time and men who wanted nothing at all, just the feeling of someone else's skin against theirs.

Elias was different.

He wanted all of me. Not just my body, not just my time, but the parts I kept hidden, the parts I'd never shown anyone. He wanted the thief and the liar and the woman who'd been running for five years. He wanted the girl who'd watched her mother leave and decided she'd never need anyone again. He wanted the scars and the secrets and the soft parts underneath.

And he took them. One by one. With his hands and his mouth and his patience. He took them and he held them and he gave them back to me, changed somehow, made lighter.

When I woke up, the sun was coming through the window, and the city was waking up, and Elias was lying next to me with his eyes closed and his hand on my hip. I watched him sleep for a long time. I watched the way his chest rose and fell. I watched the way his fingers twitched, like he was dreaming of something he wanted to hold onto.

I should've left. That's what I do. I don't stay. I never stay. I've spent my whole life leaving before I could be left, and I've gotten good at it, so good that I can be out of a bed and out of a life before the other person even knows I'm gone.

But I didn't leave. I stayed. I lay there in his bed, in his apartment, in his life, and I let myself feel something I'd been running from for as long as I could remember.

I let myself feel at home.

The watch was on the nightstand. Silver. Old. The same watch I'd seen on his wrist at The Sinkhole, the one I'd wanted to steal, the one I'd been going to steal before I looked at his face. I reached for it. I don't know why. Old habits, maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to hold something of his, something that had been against his skin, something that would still be there when I left.

"You can have it," he said.

I turned. He was awake. He was watching me with those patient eyes, the ones that saw everything, the ones that never blinked first.

"I don't want it," I said.

"You do." He sat up. The sheet fell away from his chest, and I looked, because I couldn't help it, because I'd spent the night memorizing him and I still wasn't done. "Take it. It's yours."

"I don't take things from people I..."

I stopped. I didn't know how to finish the sentence. People I sleep with? People I like? People I'm falling for, which was the truth, which was the thing I couldn't say, which was the thing I'd been running from since the moment I looked at him across the bar.

"People you what?" he asked.

I didn't answer. I picked up the watch. It was heavier than I expected, cold against my palm, and I could feel the weight of it, the history of it, the years it had spent on his wrist.

"Who gave it to you?" I asked.

"My wife." He said it without flinching. "Our first anniversary. She said I needed to know what time it was, because I was always late."

"Were you?"

"Always." He smiled. That small smile, the one that changed his face. "I'm trying to be better."

I looked at the watch. I looked at the time. It was 7:43 in the morning, and the sun was rising over the bay, and I was sitting in a stranger's bed holding a dead woman's gift, and I felt more alive than I'd felt in years.

"I should go," I said.

"You should stay."

"I should go."

"Stay." He reached for me. His hand closed around my wrist, the same way it had in the study, the same way it had at the bar, and I felt it again, that line of heat, that pull, that thing I couldn't name. "Just for today. Just for breakfast. Then you can go."

I should've said no. I should've pulled away. I should've done any of the hundred things a smart woman would've done.

But I've never been a smart woman.

"Just for breakfast," I said.

He smiled. He pulled me back into bed. And I let him.

That was three months ago. I'm still here. I'm still in his apartment, still in his bed, still wearing the dress he bought me, which hangs in his closet now, next to his suits and his shirts and the tuxedo he wore the night I stole his heart.

I didn't steal his watch. I want to be clear about that. I could have. I had it in my hand, and I could have taken it, and he would have let me, because he lets me do anything, because he trusts me, which is the most terrifying thing anyone has ever done.

But I didn't take it. I put it back on the nightstand. I put it back where it belonged.

And then I stayed.

I don't know how this ends. I don't know if it ends well. I've never been good at endings. I've spent my whole life running from them, leaving before they could happen, protecting myself from the thing I wanted most.

But I know this. I know that I woke up this morning next to a man who sees me, really sees me, and I didn't want to run. I know that I looked at him sleeping and I felt something I'd never felt before, something that scared me more than any mark, any cop, any closed door.

I know that I'm in love with him. And I know that love is the most dangerous thing I've ever stolen.

The watch is on the nightstand. The painting is on the mantel. And somewhere, in a city full of people who've never worked a day in their lives, Vincent Rourke is wondering who took his prize, and Elias Vance is smiling that small smile, and I'm sitting here in his kitchen, writing this down, trying to figure out how a thief like me ended up with something she can't give back.

I don't have an answer. I don't think there is one. I think some things just happen, and you either run from them or you don't, and the only thing that matters is which one you choose.

I chose to stay.

I'm still choosing.

Every day, I'm still choosing.