"What are you doing?"
The lamp snaps on. Light cuts the room into clinical halves.
Colette freezes mid-step on Baylor's bedspread, one shoe dangling from her toes. She had rehearsed this in the elevator, in the shower, in the car on the ride home. None of those rehearsals prepared her for the sound of his voice when it hits the quiet of their bedroom.
"Baylor," she says, too loud, and then quieter, "I—"
He sits on the edge of the bed, surgical calm in a sweater that is too expensive for anyone who sleeps with shoes on. He doesn't stand. His hand doesn't move to pull the blanket. He simply looks at her.
"Why are you on my bed?" he asks.
She swallows. The plan had been stupid and brilliant. She was supposed to be casual, irresistible, leaning in, whispering something about dinner being a failure, needing comfort. She'd practiced flirting in the car and on the bus. In reality she had tripped over the throw rug and landed in a pose that was not flirty.
"It's warm," she says.
He blinks once. The single movement reads like a small battery-powered storm.
"That is my bed," he says. "Your bed is across the hall."
She tries to laugh. It comes out a hiccup. She knows every inch of his face by heart; she has catalogued his pauses, the way he picks up a pen, the way his jaw sets. She has studied his
