Page 16

Chapter Sixteen

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W elcome to my home away from home,” Malachi says, voice low and theatrical as the elevator doors glide open with a soft hiss.

He steps into the foyer ahead of us, still carrying both our bags—my beat-up purple duffel and Charlie’s plain black one—despite my protests. I let him, even though my fingers itch to take them back. There’s something grounding in letting someone else shoulder the weight, just for a moment.

We step inside, and immediately, the air shifts.

The building isn’t near The Place. It’s farther uptown, tucked close to the glittering heart of Topside. Cleaner, quieter, more polished than anything in the Barrows. Every mile we’d driven here, the distance between where I came from and where I am now stretched thinner and thinner until it feels like I might snap.

The elevator was an omen—the badge swipe, the button panel with names instead of numbers. Casadecappa at the top. Malachi didn’t say it, but the message was clear: we’re not just guests. We’re out of our depth.

I knew it would be swanky. I didn’t expect this.

White marble sprawls underfoot, gleaming faintly in the dim light. High ceilings, clean lines, edges too perfect to have been shaped by daily life. I catch impressions more than details. Open spaces. Towering windows. A kind of hollow grandeur that looks beautiful but feels... sterile.

The door shuts behind us with a sound like a whisper locking us in.

Charlie’s gasp cuts through the hush. She dashes to the window, palms flattening against the glass.

“Holy cow! Mom, you can see the Barrows from here!”

Her voice is pure wonder, and for one dizzy second, I want to feel it too. To share that breathless awe. But it fades before it can settle. There’s a knot still lodged under my ribs, thick and heavy.

Someone broke into our home tonight.

Someone stood in the hallway, separated from Charlie by nothing but a door and a few feet of air.

I can still feel the burn in my muscles from dragging the chest against the door. Still feel the throb in my scraped knuckles. I keep replaying it—the scrape of feet outside, the whispered hush of terror Charlie tried so hard to hold in.

I lied to her. Told her everything would be fine when I knew very well it could go badly.

We’re here now. We’re safe.

But the cracks in my sense of safety don’t patch easily.

Malachi’s voice cuts through again, smoother now. “Come. I’ll show you a better view.”

He presses a point on the glass wall, and a section slides open into a narrow balcony fifteen stories up. Without hesitation, he steps out onto it, perching casually on the railing like it’s nothing.

My stomach knots at the sight.

Charlie looks at me, her eyes huge. Hopeful.

“Can I, Mom? Please?”

My mouth dries. Hasn’t she experienced enough danger tonight? I glance from her, to the gaping city below, to Malachi’s outstretched hand.

He catches my hesitation instantly. His gaze meets mine—steady, sure.

“I won’t let anything happen to her.”

It’s not just a reassurance. It’s a vow. One he speaks as easily as breathing.

I nod, barely. “Be careful, please.”

Charlie beams and runs to him, throwing her arms around the safe side of the railing, breath fogging against the chill night air. Her laugh lifts into the darkness—bright, unburdened.

Malachi watches her with a look I can’t quite name. Something fierce and soft all at once.

Then he turns that look on me.

The air between us tightens.

His grin softens. His eyes catch the faint city glow—still golden, but now rimmed in the faintest shade of red.

“Want to see the view too?” he asks, voice lower.

I shake my head, voice thin. “I’ll pass.”

Not because I’m afraid of heights.

But because looking too closely at him feels more dangerous.

Because every time he looks at me like that, like I matter, I remember how easily the ground can disappear from under you.

He chuckles—a low, almost amused sound—but there’s an edge to it now. Something that curls around my ribs and pulls tight.

He moves back inside, smooth as water, and Charlie trails after him, chattering about how tiny the streets look from above.

Only once she’s inside do I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

He ruffles her hair in passing, a small, casual gesture that lands heavier than it should. Then he seals the balcony closed with a soft hum of mechanical glass.

I look around, slower now.

The place is stunning. Expensive. Cold.

There’s no mess. No clutter. No framed pictures. No threadbare blankets thrown over the backs of chairs. No little piles of mail on the kitchen counter.

It’s safe here. I know that. I feel it.

But it isn’t home.

It’s impossible not to feel the gulf opening between us. Malachi’s life is marble floors and bulletproof glass and private elevators with names instead of numbers. My life is secondhand furniture, photos stuck to the fridge with mismatched magnets, hand-me-down quilts on the beds.

I fought to build a life where Charlie would feel warm. Wanted. Safe.

Here, I feel like a piece of furniture that doesn’t match the set.

Malachi disappears upstairs with our bags, and his absence leaves a hollow in the room. The traitorous part of my brain whispers that it’s not the place that makes me feel safe, it’s him. I can’t handle that realization right now, so I bury it deep. I want to gather Charlie up in my arms and hold her until the world makes sense again. I’m the parent, though. It’s my job to make her feel comfortable, not the other way around.

Charlie spins in slow, sleepy circles by the window, her reflection ghosting across the glass. She clutches her narwhal to her chest, murmuring, “He has a movie theater in his living room.”

The absurdity makes a breath of sound escape my throat—almost a laugh.

“I wonder if he has to deal with an hour of previews when watching anything,” I say, moving toward her.

She tests the sectional couch with a cautious flop, then grins.

It’s a small thing, but seeing her smile—even here, even now—untwists something in my chest.

Malachi returns—jacket gone, sleeves rolled to the elbows. The button-up shirt fits him almost too well. He looks less like a vampire now and more like a man stepping into his own skin.

Charlie edges closer to me as he approaches. I slip an arm around her shoulders, feeling the small tremble still lingering under her skin.

“Your place is... huge,” Charlie mumbles.

I clear my throat, forcing a little more air into my lungs. “Malachi, we—I can’t thank you enough. You didn’t have to do all this.”

His response is immediate, smooth. “I wanted to.”

It shouldn’t warm me. It does anyway.

Malachi moves beyond the living room like the place bends to him. Charlie has gone quiet, still tucked under my arm, and it’s only when he speaks again that she stirs.

“I asked Joséphine to come over tomorrow.” His voice is calm, deliberate, but there’s something beneath it—like he’s testing the words before he offers them to either of us. “She’ll stay here to watch Charlie, in case you decide to go in to work. I know we open soon, but I want you to know you can take whatever time you need.”

The statement hits harder than expected. I blink. My body’s still locked half in survival mode, wired and disoriented like I’m waiting for the next crash. The idea of leaving Charlie again, of walking away from her so soon after tonight... it feels like tearing off a splint before the bone has reset. I tilt my chin slightly, swallowing down the gut-deep unease that rises high in my throat. It’s logical. It makes sense. But it still feels wrong.

“Joséphine?”

“Joséphine is the best,” he says to Charlie, eyes flicking to mine as he continues. “She’s the unofficial head of the Nightshades, honestly. She’s got four centuries of experience keeping us vampires in line. Nothing fazes her. And she loves to cook.”

“She sounds like a fairy godmother who could snap someone’s neck,” I mutter before I can stop myself. The words spill out, jagged and brittle. For one embarrassed heartbeat, I regret them.

Except Charlie bursts out laughing, the sound crinkling with leftover fear heard too often tonight, fading now into something almost playful. Even Malachi’s mouth tilts, the corner of his grin quietly amused.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I push on like I hadn’t just shoved my foot in my mouth. The words come quiet, flat, stretched too tight with internal contradiction. “I might stay home with her.”

Except I know that in less than five hours, it’ll be the day before opening night at The Place and we’re supposed to have the final dress rehearsal. As the stage producer, I really shouldn’t miss it. I’m torn between my duty to my child and my duty to a job. Even if Malachi says I can take all the time I need, I don’t know if I could handle the guilt of taking the day off.

I look down at Charlie, needing to know how she feels. This Joséphine is a stranger to me and her. She lifts her face, and her expression is unexpectedly open. Resigned, a little sad, but thoughtful in that way she gets when she surprises me.

“It’s okay, Mom,” she says. Her voice is low, tired, but sure. “You don’t have to be with me every second. I know you’ve been working so hard. Don’t let the asshole ruin that for you.”

The breath catches in my chest, a strangled huff of a laugh. I kiss the crown of her head, muttering, “Language, little lady.”

I want to tell her she’s a thousand times more important than any opening week, any broken spotlight. That the idea of not being there for her goes against everything I swore when our bio-mother shoved her into my arms.

She’s watching me with that quiet tenacity she’s always had—my girl who grew up with thrift store clothes and a mom always working.

Malachi catches that too, if the shift in his gaze is any measure. He steps forward—not close enough to crowd, but close enough I can feel the weight of him again. That damn scent. Silver fog on stone. Woodsmoke trailing fingers through citrus groves. He smells like storms about to break.

I glance at him through my lashes, the way I used to with men I didn’t want to fully engage—half open, half defensive. But my breath catches again because he’s not looking at Charlie anymore. His focus sharpens on me like a blade being honed, like there’s a predator somewhere under that handsome face, and it’s starting to stretch under his skin.

“It’s all arranged if you want. She’s already planning to bake her chocolate chip toffee cookies,” he adds, attention turned sudden and precise again. His voice lowers to a shape that heat slides into, and I feel it where I shouldn’t. “Ashe will bring her by at nine. Then, if you want, he could take you to work. Or you could ride with me.”

I blink at that. A cozy image of domesticity, where Charlie bakes cookies in his massive penthouse kitchen and we drive together to work every day. My heart is a hummingbird stuck in my throat. Because it shouldn’t be so easy to picture that. None of this should feel like a life sliding into place with a click.

“Only if it’s not an imposition,” I say slowly, not sure who I’m truly speaking to—him or myself. “I’m not used to strangers watching her. I—I need to know she’ll call me. If anything feels even slightly off, she has to call me. Immediately.”

My voice is sharp now. Not loud, but sharp. It cuts easily. My hand drops to curl around Charlie’s shoulder, grounding myself in her warmth like a wall I can still anchor to. I’m not giving that up, not for soft-voiced vampires with babysitter references and steel-threaded baritones.

Charlie nods. “I promise, Mom.”

It comes too quickly—rehearsed, almost, like she’s already prepared this stage direction. Maybe she has. Maybe I am more transparent than I want to be. It doesn’t matter, because the second she says it, my spine unlocks a little.

Not enough to soothe the buzzing anxiety still punching lines inside my head. Not enough to erase the feel of a note sealed in an unwanted gift box. But enough that the knot loosens, fraction by fraction. I give in, nodding but my smile probably looks as forced as it is.

Malachi doesn’t press anything else, though he could.

Instead, he gestures toward the stairway he’d come down. The motion pulls his shirt tight across his chest and I hate that I notice. Hate that I remember how those sleeves once framed arms pushing me against worn cushions, how that body bent over mine with an importance he still doesn’t know.

“I’ll show you both the guest rooms,” he says. “They’re upstairs, same hall as mine. You’ll be close.”

He doesn’t linger on that last part, but it’s there. And I appreciate it more than I want to admit. He’s saved me once before, stepped in again when another man wouldn’t stop pushing, and now he was there when my daughter and I needed him the most.

We follow him without speaking, Charlie’s hand tucked securely in mine, but my mind stays on the man a few steps ahead.

The easy way he moves, controlled and deliberate, like the world never catches him off balance.

The way he doesn’t ask for permission to help me. He just does.

The way he sees me—really sees me—even when I wish he wouldn’t.

I tell myself it’s gratitude. Relief. Trauma responses tangled with adrenaline and exhaustion. Logical things.

But deep down, I know better.

It’s him.

It’s the way my heartbeat changes when he’s near. The way my body remembers every place he’s ever touched me. The way the space between us hums, thick and heavy, even when nothing is said at all.

I feel something for him. I have since we first kissed as strangers in his car.

Something that isn’t safe. Something that won’t be easy to shove into a box and bury. Something that terrifies me almost as much as the thought of losing what little normalcy Charlie and I have managed to build.

I can’t keep up this lie to myself much longer.

Not with the way his voice wraps around my name.

Not with the way my soul feels like it’s leaning toward him, even when I try to keep my distance.

There are things that I should tell him. I just don’t know if I could handle it if the truth pushes him away completely.