“Mrs. Deleon said you demanded I come home.”
“I didn’t demand it,” I said, blinking up at him. “I asked.”
He raised a brow, calling my bluff without a word.
“Okay,” I admitted, letting my voice grow breathy, “I asked... loudly.”
He almost smiled—almost.
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” I went on. “I just—I feel like I’m being punished. You locked me in this room like I’m dangerous, when really, I’m just... grieving.”
Khalil’s gaze dropped to the floor, just for a second, and in that second, I slipped in deeper.
“You think I’m unstable,” I whispered. “You think I’ll run, or ruin something, embarrass you, or hurt myself, but I won’t—not if you just let me breathe.”
Khalil stepped further inside my room, stopping at the edge of my bed. “I don’t trust you,” he said plainly.
“I know.”
“But I believe your grief.”
I nodded, eyes dropping. “Thank you. I don’t want much,” I said softly. “Just... please let me roam the halls and sit outside. I need to feel human again.”
Khalil studied me long enough to make my skin prickle. “Fine,” he snapped, his jaw ticking as if he didn’t want to say his next words. “You can move around the house.”
I looked up, eyes wide with gratitude that I didn’t have to fake. “Really?”
“But if you so much as breathe wrong—”
“I won’t,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “I swear.”
He nodded once and turned to leave, but before he made it to the door, I called out, softer than before.
“Khalil?”
He stopped, not turning around.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t respond, but I didn’t need him to.
He’d given me the first piece of what I wanted, and now the real games could begin.
“Mrs. Deleon, I’m homeeee!” a woman sang as she strutted into the estate, her heels clicking like gunfire against the marble tile. “I came to get some peach cobbler and some of that crawfish étouffée you made me the other day.”
I didn’t have to see her face to know she was smiling. Anyone bold enough to enter this house singing like that had to be comfortable and know who they were dealing with.
Mrs. Deleon, the only person in this mansion I was genuinely afraid of, appeared in the foyer with a hand on her hip and a look that could stop grown men mid-sentence. “Don’t come in this house with all that hollerin’. And take your narrow behind back to that door and get them shoes off. You scuffin’ up my floors.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t pull out the belt,” the woman giggled, already backtracking.
From where I sat curled up in the study, I watched it all unfold through the crack in the door, even saw the moment Mrs. Deleon leaned in and whispered, “You met that crazy girl your brother got layin’ up in here,” once the girl returned barefoot, voice lowered but not low enough.
Crazy girl. She meant me.
Mrs. Deleon and the mystery woman were still whispering when both of them turned at the same damn time and looked directly toward the study, right at me.
Shit.
