Chapter Eight · Close Quarters

The Pacific Heights design phase swallowed October whole.

I was on site by seven most mornings, and I stayed late most nights. The foreman thought I was a maniac. The Ashford project manager thought I was a genius. Kael thought I was something else, and I did not know what to call it, so I called it "client hours" and refused to look too closely.

We had three consecutive late-night sessions. The city lit up below us. I'd stand at the north glass with my color swatches, and he'd stand a respectful distance away, reviewing permits on his tablet, and the quiet between us was the kind of quiet that has weight to it. The kind that leans.

On the third night, it rained.

Los Angeles rains in the way Los Angeles does everything: with complete conviction, as if the sky has decided to finally be honest. The lights in the penthouse flickered once, twice, and died.

"Great," I said. "We're in a concrete box on the thirtieth floor."

"Forty-two floors up," Kael corrected. "And we have emergency lighting in the stairwell. We have forty minutes before backup kicks in. Sit down."

I sat on the concrete floor. He sat down beside me, not too close, with his back against the stud wall. Through the glass, the city was a field of thunderstorms, lightning lighting the bay in slow flashes. We were alone. Truly alone. The foreman had gone home at six. Silas was — Silas was somewhere, being Silas.

"Tell me," Kael said, into the dark, "why you design rooms where people breathe."

It was the last question I expected. It was the first question I wanted to answer.

"My childhood bedroom," I said, "faced a brick wall. The house next door was built right up against ours. I got, on a good day, forty minutes of indirect light. I grew up thinking light was something that happened to other people. To rooms I saw in movies. I spent my whole childhood pressing my face to a window that looked at brick, and promising myself that when I grew up, I would build rooms that got as much light as they could possibly hold."

I hadn't told anyone that. Not Zoe. Not a therapist I'd gone to twice and quit. Not Reyes, who'd paid me a premium to finish his house. It was the sort of thing you buried, because saying it out loud made it smaller, and smaller was worse.

"I used to draw the sun," I heard myself say. "On the wall. In crayon. A yellow circle, with rays. My mother yelled at me for marking the paint. I drew it on the inside of my closet door instead, where she couldn't see. I'd sit in the closet with the door closed and look at my own sun. It was the only one I had."

He was quiet. In the flashes of lightning, I could see his profile. He was listening like it mattered. Like the story of a brick wall and a crayon sun was the most important thing anyone had said to him all year.

"That's not a career," he said finally. "That's a rescue mission. On behalf of a small child you used to be."

I didn't answer right away. I listened to the rain on the glass. Somewhere far below, a siren went by, thin and lonely. The thunder rolled out over the bay.

"You can say that again," I said. "I build a room, and then I stand in it, and for ten seconds I get to pretend the small child at the brick wall grew up in a place that got light. It's not healthy. I know it's not healthy. But it's the only therapy I can afford."

Something cracked open in my chest. I pressed my palm flat against the cold concrete floor.

"Kael. If you offer to build me a room — if you offer to 'fix' the childhood bedroom, the way men like you fix things — I will walk. I'm not doing this because I need you to fix it. I don't need saving. I need freedom. The light in Pacific Heights isn't going to heal the brick wall. It's just going to be good light. That's enough. I'm enough."

"I know." His voice was low. Steady. "I wasn't going to offer. I was going to say: build it. Build the best light room this city has ever seen. And when you're done, you can look at it and remember that the small child at the brick wall won."

The lightning lit the room again. He was closer than he'd been when the power went out. I had no idea when it had happened. Maybe I had moved. Maybe he had. The air between us was the air before a storm, the way the sky feels held.

I could feel the heat off his coat. I could feel it like a second skin.

Neither of us moved. One beat. Two beats. Three.

The lights came back on, flood-bright, and the penthouse snapped back into a worksite. The hum of the building returned. Somewhere below, a generator roared to life.

Kael stood up. He held out his hand. I took it. It was warm. Steady. He pulled me to my feet, and his hand stayed in mine for half a beat too long before he let go.

"Back to work," he said.

"Back to work," I agreed.

But the air between us had changed. Permanently. The room was still the same concrete shell. The city was still glittering. Something underneath it all had shifted, and I did not know the name of it, and I was not sure I wanted to.