Page 38 of Velvet Betrayal
“Are you going to offer me coffee?”
“Help yourself,” I said. “You seem to help yourself to everything else.”
He ghosted his palm down my spine, squeezed my hip, and for a second I wanted to turn and break the mug against his chest.
For a second, I wanted him to keep his hand there, to see if comfort could ever untangle the terror now braided into my every waking minute.
I did neither.
I set my mug on the counter and stared at the black rectangle of the microwave, watched my own face glitch and blur in the glass until I had no choice but to meet my own eyes.
He poured his coffee, careful not to disturb the fragile truce. He took a sip, let the silence spool out.
“Can I stay?” he asked finally.
I’d been expecting it. I’d also expected it would set off something in me, some adrenaline rush, but instead all I felt was the slow, sinking sense of settling into the life I’d ended up with. “For now,” I said. “But tonight, you sleep on the couch.”
He nodded, no argument. “That’s fair.”
The day blurred with the rituals of homecoming. Laundry. Fridge triage. Rosie woke up long enough to demand apple slices, then crashed again in a mountain of pillows, cocoonedand snoring like a small, drugged bear. The aftermath of running for your life, apparently, was fatigue and a sudden, greedy hunger for comfort.
Kieran hung his coat in the hall closet, his movements so at-ease I could almost believe we weren’t squatting in borrowed time. He even swept the kitchen floor, with a kind of absent, bad-boy penance that made me want to laugh and throw a dish at his head. It felt like an apology he didn’t know how to say.
We fell into a limbo—neither partners nor exes nor hostages, but something rawer. I hated the necessity of his presence—the unspoken contract that protection was worth more than pride. Still, as the sun started its pale midwinter fade, a hollow peace settled over the house. We said nothing about the future, which I guess was a kind of truce.
At six, after Rosie had watched two straight hours of TV, Kieran made dinner—fried eggs and toast, a little cheese melted onto the plate for Rosie because she liked it that way. She inhaled it, then turned on Kieran with the same judgmental stare I used in court.
“Mami says you’re not good at cleaning up,” she accused.
Kieran shrugged, unbothered. “That’s true,” he said, like it was a badge of honor. “But I’m learning.”
She narrowed her eyes, as if to say she’d be monitoring this claim.
After dinner, Kieran attacked the mountain of towels like it had personally offended him. He folded fast, methodical, like he needed to keep his hands busy or risk saying something we’d both regret. I didn’t help. I just watched. Sometimes men, when cornered by silence, back themselves into confessions.
I waited for it to happen with him. It didn’t.
Rosie turned the piles into a fortress, slinging towels across chair backs, draping one over his head like a battle standard. He let her. Let her boss him around, rearrange him, decorate him.For fifteen minutes, it looked like a life we could’ve had—messy, easy, normal. It was sweet enough to give me a fucking cavity.
When she got bored and announced she was switching to LEGOs, he gave her a dead-serious salute and stacked the towels without complaint. Then he turned to me—not challenging, not apologizing. Just...waiting. Like whatever came next was mine to decide.
I gave him nothing. Let him stew.
He didn’t push. He watched a baking show with Rosie, carried her upstairs when she fell asleep during a commercial, and tucked her in like it was muscle memory. Like this was his bedtime routine.
Like she’d always been his.
When he came back out, he didn’t say a word. Just stared at her door, still and unmoving, until I wanted to shake him.
Or drag him into my room and climb him like a tree.
I hated how good he was at this. Hated how badly my body wanted him anyway.
If we hadn’t been enemies, I would’ve called it love.
He sat next to me in the kitchen. “She’s wonderful,” he said. “So bright and funny.”
“She’s my favorite person,” I replied. I aimed it at the fridge, then caved and looked at him. It wasn’t shame on his face, but something closer to longing. He wanted to tell me, again, that he should’ve known. That he would have changed everything.
