Page 30 of He Sees You

Or I could do what any normal person would do when encountering their editor's brother in a small town.

"Cain?"

He looks up again, and this time there's something that might be amusement in those pale eyes.

"You must be Celeste." His voice is deeper than expected, cultured. Nothing like the mountain accent most locals have. "Juliette mentioned you might be coming home."

"She mentioned you too." I gesture to the empty chair across from him. "Mind if I sit? Feels weird knowing we have someone in common but never meeting."

"Please." He marks his page carefully before closing the book.

His movements are precise, controlled.

Everything about him seems deliberate, from the way he sets down the book to how he shifts his chair to accommodate my presence. "I should probably apologize for the violin. I know it carries at night. Your father has complained more than once."

"I actually liked it. Bach, right? “The Partita”?"

His eyebrows rise slightly. "You know classical music?"

"I know a little about a lot of things. Occupational hazard of being a writer." I take a sip of my coffee, studying him over the rim.

Up close, I can see small scars on his hands, the kind you get from years of working with them.

One runs across his knuckles, silver against his skin.

Another curves around his thumb. "Juliette says you read my books."

"Guilty as charged." He leans back in his chair, completely at ease despite the admission. "She sent me an advance copy of the first one, trying to prove that modern fiction could be as complex as the classics. I was ... surprised."

"Bad surprised or good surprised?"

"Complicated surprised." He picks up his coffee, and I notice how large his hands are, how carefully they handle the delicate cup. "You write about darkness with unusual honesty. Most people romanticize it or demonize it. You do neither."

"Maybe because I don't think darkness is inherently good or evil. It just is. Like nature."

"Like nature," he repeats, and something flickers across his face too quickly to read. "Is that why you came back? Looking for inspiration in natural darkness?"

The question feels loaded, but I can't say why. "Something like that. The city was too ... sanitized. Everything there is manufactured, even the danger."

"And you prefer authentic danger?"

The way he says it makes heat crawl up my neck. "I prefer authentic everything."

Stella appears with a plate of pastries neither of us ordered. "On the house," she chirps, clearly thrilled to see Cain talking to someone. "You two know each other from the city?"

"My sister is Celeste's editor," Cain explains, and I watch Stella file this information away for future gossip distribution.

She leaves us alone, and we sit in surprisingly comfortable silence for a moment.

I break off a piece of croissant, acutely aware of him watching me eat.

There's something unsettling about his focus, the way he seems to catalogue every movement.

"Can I ask you something?" I say.

"You're going to anyway."

That makes me smile despite myself. "Why here? Juliette lives in Manhattan, but you chose ... this."