Page 116 of Fractured Loyalties
My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag.
I turn left.
I’m going home. My apartment.
Just for a little while.
The cab drops me two corners away from my building. I didn’t want to be seen arriving directly. Old instinct.
The street leading to my building is quiet. Not dead, but muted. The kind of quiet that presses against the skin instead of easing it.
The second I turn the corner onto my block, I feel it.
A shift in the air.
Not wind. Not the weather.
Presence.
My grip on my bag tightens. My thumb finds the clip of the pepper spray. My other hand hovers near the knife, inside the canvas.
I take two more steps.
And then I hear him.
"Been wondering when you’d come back to this place."
My breath stills.
Caleb.
He’s leaning against the far wall of the building like he’s got a right to be here. Like the city isn’t a stranger to him, even though he never lived here. Black coat, boots scuffed, eyes darker than they were the last time I saw them—too dark for morning.
I don’t move.
He steps forward slowly, hands up like I’m some fragile creature he has to coax. “Not here to hurt you, Mara.”
“You already did,” I say.
“That wasn’t the question.”
I slide my foot back an inch. “Say what you came to say and get the fuck out of my way.”
He tilts his head. “Still got that fire.”
I flick the safety off the pepper spray. “Still got this too.”
His smile is humorless. “Cute. But if I meant you harm, you’d know it already.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want you to know why I came back. Why now.”
I don’t say anything.
Caleb watches me, jaw tight. “You think I followed you across years and borders because I missed you?”
“Did you?”
