Chapter 35 Chapter 35
Chapter 35
DEREK
I got home before her.
That was the plan, the one that I had decided upon, I had to leave the clinic before Rosalie finished the discharge paperwork, get back to the house, be there when Selene arrived so she wouldn't know I'd been sitting outside her hospital room for two hours while she quietly negotiated her own release and worried about inconveniencing me.
I changed clothes again when I got home, put on the kind of thing I'd normally wear after leaving the office early on a Sunday.
I wore the kind of casual clothes of a man who'd spent his afternoon working and had come home at a reasonable hour, would wear and not a man who'd run across the city in wolf form, fought two wolves in a basement, and carried his bleeding wife out of a meatpacking plant.
Then I sat in the living room and waited.
I didn't turn on the television. Didn't open my laptop or check my phone beyond the occasional update from Marcus about the Blackwood situation. I just sat by the chair near the window and silently waited for her.
It was almost late in the day when the car appeared at the end of the driveway. Not my Mercedes—that was still evidence of a crime scene. This was a car service, a black sedan that pulled up to the front of the house and stopped.
I watched through the window.
The door opened. Selene got out.
She was wearing different clothes than this morning—something Rosalie must have arranged. These were simple outfits, a blouse and trousers that fit well enough, clearly borrowed or quickly purchased. Her hair was down, which she almost never wore it, and I understood why when I looked more closely.
The cut along her hairline was hidden under the fall of her hair. Or mostly hidden. From where I was sitting, I could see the careful way she'd arranged it, could see the edge of what might have been concealer at her temple.
She reached back into the car for her purse, and I saw her left arm.
No sling. The arm Dr. Ananya had confirmed it was broken and needed a sling for support because the radius cracked cleanly in the impact, and Selene was carrying her purse on that side with the careful, practice of someone that had decided that the arm would simply have to function regardless of the medical opinion on the matter.
I could see the slight tension in her jaw from across the driveway, the pain that flashed across her face when the weight of the bag fully settled on that arm.
She paid the driver, said something that made him nod, and then turned toward the house.
The makeup was good. She'd had help, probably from one of Rosalie's people, because the bruising along her jaw and cheekbone was almost invisible at this distance.
Almost. I knew what I was looking for, knew the exact geography of every injury she'd sustained, and I could trace each one under the careful cosmetic work.
She walked up the front path and I moved away from the window before she could look up and see me watching.
I heard her key in the lock. Heard the door open, heard the particular quiet way she moved through the foyer, setting her purse down on the hall table with a gentleness that had nothing to do with care for the bag's contents and everything to do with the arm she was trying not to use.
I was in the living room doorway when she looked up.
She went very still for a fraction of a second—just a beat, barely noticeable if I had not been looking, this was the pause of someone who'd been expecting an empty house and was planning on what her next move should be. Then she smiled, and it was so practiced, so smooth, that if I hadn't spent two years in proximity to her I might not have seen the effort behind it.
"You're home," she said.
"I left early." I kept my voice neutral, kept everything carefully ordinary. "Quiet afternoon."
"Oh." She moved into the foyer with that careful walk, each step measured to avoid jarring her ribs. "I'm sorry I'm late. I had lunch with Rosalie and we lost track of time. You know how she gets when she has an audience."
She was looking at me with the pleasant, slightly distant expressions she used when talking to me, the one that communicated that she was present and engaged and fine, entirely fine, and didn't need or expect anything from me.
"How was lunch?" I asked.
"Lovely. She's been excited about some new initiative for the foundation, wants to expand the youth program."
She set her purse down on the side table by the living room entrance, and I watched her left hand do as little of the work as possible.
"I should have texted. I didn't realize how late it had gotten."
She was apologizing. For nearly dying, for being kidnapped, for the cracked ribs that were making each breath a careful negotiation—she was standing in our foyer and apologizing for being late.
"There's something else," she said, and now there was a different quality to her voice, something that had rehearsed itself. She met my eyes directly. "Your car. The Mercedes."
I waited. Trying to see if she was going to come clean, the Mercedes was a big part of her plan that she could not explain or hide because the car was rumpled and a mess, and was customized that she wouldn't be able to replace it, or claim it was stolen.
"I took it this morning. I hope that's alright, I should have asked first." She paused, and I could see her building the story she'd constructed, laying it out piece by piece.
"When I parked near the restaurant, another car reversed into it in the lot. I wasn't in it at the time, I'd already gone inside, but when I came out there was damage to the rear and one side. The other driver left without leaving information."