I stop reading after that.

A sudden fracture in my heart splits wide open, gripping my throat and glassing my eyes.

My stomach churns. I feel burning hot, the start of a thin film of sweat misting my hairline. Why is it so fucking hot all of a sudden? I have an overwhelming urge to rip off my shirt just to feel the air unobstructed on my skin. My heart riots to break free of its bone cage and for a moment I think I might be slipping into a flashback, so I grip the counter, the sharp edge of the quartz biting into the wound on my palm until the pain kicks in and keeps me anchored to the present.

“Get your shit together,” I hiss at myself as I fold the letter and shut the drawer, trying the next one down where I find a set of small screwdrivers. With a shaking hand, I take the sharpest one and pierce the plastic covering the cap, nearly slicing my other palm in my uncoordinated desperation. The moment the cap is off, the bottle is at my lips and I take the longest swig of Tequila I’ve ever had in my life.

A smoky burn lights up my chest. I blink until I’m reasonably sure the tears have dissipated. A few deep, trembling breaths become steadier ones. I force a mantra upon myself: you promised to make Jack suffer.

I did. I did promise that. I wanted retribution for all the many times he was callous and cruel. And worse…

Exactly. He said he wanted to leave. He said it just the other day, in fact. And soon, West Paine will be yours. He’ll be skulking off defeated and you’ll be the winner. It’s the reckoning you hoped for. Isn’t that what you wanted?

I think so…

I keep telling myself these things as I leave my unused metal glass on the countertop, taking another sip from the bottle as I wander away. My heart seems to crave the outdoors, the fresh air. Something cleansing, away from this scent of newness like a barbed reminder that I’m in a temporary place, a showroom. I’m not really paying attention to where I’m going when I start toward the dining room but detour to the left. But my heart must have known, because it leads me into an enchanted, magical realm.

The conservatory.

There are tiers of white wooden shelves lining the glass walls, each one filled with pots of different shapes and sizes. Some of the shelves hold plants with no blooms. Over others are small grow lights to encourage the buds to flower. Emerald leaves and vibrant blooms cascade from baskets hanging from the peaked ceiling, the clouds beyond the slanted windows painted orange and pink with the last streaks of the setting sun. The herringbone pattern of the red brick floor leads to a small table and wicker chairs near the far end of the sunroom where a wood stove rests unlit.

And everywhere, there is blue.

I don’t know all the flowers, but I know some. There are blue dahlias with conical petals whose ends deepen to indigo and violet. Blue roses, which I’ve never seen before, and I run my fingers across one as I bend to inhale its sweet scent. The fragrance of blue Jasmine and white Stargazer lilies with streaks of cerulean perfume the air. And most abundant of all are those blue flowers that Jack left in my office, grouped in different shades. Some light. Some dark. Some bright. Some pale. Each flower its own unique color, their pots numbered with neatly written labels.

I’m approaching one group of blooms when movement outside at the back of the garden catches my eye. For a breath, I startle. My immediate concern is that it’s Hayes. I lean closer to the glass and see a man, but it’s not the rogue agent. He’s wearing a white jacket with writing on the back that I can’t quite make out, picking something up from the ground next to an open gate in the fence beneath the canopy of spruce boughs. It’s a rolled up carpet, the edge of the cut pile a creamy white. He loads it into the open back of a van. Stamp & Morningstar Carpet Company, the decal says across the doors when he closes them.

“Alcohol theft, Dr. Roth?”

I startle and nearly drop the bottle gripped in my hand, hissing a curse as my other palm lays above my battered heart.

“You said to make myself at home,” I manage, my voice barely more than an unsteady whisper.

Jack pulls the bottle from my grip and reads the label. “I get the sense you’re not onboard with the idea of staying here if your immediate response is to find the strongest alcohol in the house and drink straight from the bottle,” he says. His smirk doesn’t reach his eyes when his gaze meets mine. “I might have more work to do to convince you.”

“Work…” I repeat, losing all my words as I look back toward the gate. It closes and the van departs. I lean closer to the glass. I had to have imagined it, this glimpse of something Jack Sorensen would never do, surely... But the scent in the rest of the house is real. That smell of new furniture… or carpet…? I smelled it just a moment ago…

I turn, nearly bumping into a tray of Jack’s blue flowers. He steadies my arm as he prompts me back a step from the table.

“Careful,” he says. “Those poppies are quite rare. They’ve taken me a few years to perfect.”

I glance once more toward the gate before I meet Jack’s eyes. That brick from earlier has returned to my throat, determined to choke my voice in a vise of pain. Swallowing does nothing but make it worse. “You… changed your carpet today? From… cream?” I ask, trying to control my expressions and force a nonchalant voice.

Jack sets the bottle of Tequila down on a shelf and presses his palms to the edge of a table as he leans forward to look at the gate with a low and thoughtful hmm. “If I say yes, will that result in more alcohol theft, or less?”

He tosses me a brief, faint smile over his shoulder.

Even those who know him well would look at Jack and never notice the many faint traces of emotion beneath his subtle expression. Concern. Desire. Pain. Perhaps even fear. No one else could track them into his lightless depths.

No one but me.

Jack looks from me to the flowers, then back again. There’s a flicker of movement at the corners of his eyes as they narrow, just a hint of motion and then it’s gone before he’s even turned back to the window. But it’s enough of a trail for me to follow.

I stand in the shadow of his thoughts as a sliver of light sneaks in.

And that’s all I need to see inside.

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SIXTEEN

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ELSKEDE

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KYRIE

Time grinds to a halt.

It starts as a tremble in my lips. A tremor in my shoulders. A breath trapped in my lungs, begging to release with a whoosh, a tempting relief for the pain that swirls in whiteout drifts beneath my bones. I try to trap it in an unsteady exhalation, but Jack notices right away, his shoulders tensing. It takes him a moment to face me, as though he has to gather his resolve to watch me unravel right next to him.

“Why are the flowers all blue,” I whisper, tears gathering on my lashes, one falling to carve a streak down my skin.

Jack could give me a hundred different lies.

Maybe he considers it as he takes a step closer.

He raises a hand to my face. His eyes follow the track of his thumb as it passes through another tear that follows the path laid down by the first.

“You’re asking questions you already know the answers to, lille mejer,” Jack says.

It takes an eternity for him to lift his gaze the short distance from my cheek to my eyes. He leans down, not taking his hand from where it rests on the side of my face, his breath warming my tears. The softest kiss presses to my lashes when I close my eyes.