Page 62 of Devotion
It started when I was six. The nannies would put me to bed in the room Patrick assigned me. The door to the family wing was always closed, and some nights I could hear the other childrenlaughing on the other side, Dominic and his friends, the sounds of a family that existed twenty feet away and didn’t include me.
My room felt too open. Too much space. Too many shadows that could become anything, and in a house where the man who was supposed to be my father locked me in basements and the woman who was supposed to be my mother called methe other child, anything could become a threat.
The bed was too exposed. If someone opened the door to harm me, they’d see me immediately. If the shadows moved, there was nowhere to go. I was visible, alone, and those two things together made a six-year-old’s nervous system scream.
I’d crawl into the closet, pull a blanket in, and close the door. The enclosed space made me feel safe. The walls were close enough to touch on both sides, the ceiling was low, and nobody could find me here. Nobody could hurt me here because the darkness was mine, not Patrick’s, not the basement’s, butmine.
I could press my back against one wall, my feet against the other, and know exactly where I was. Exactly how much space existed around me and the knowing was the opposite of the basement where the space was unknown, dark, and full of punishment.
I did it through childhood. In England when Grandma took me for vacation sometimes. Through adolescence. Through the years in LA when I was landing roles and sleeping on closet floors in rented apartments. Because the beds were too open, the rooms too big, and the boy inside the man couldn’t stop hiding.
My first big apartment had a walk-in closet the size of most people’s bedrooms, and I’d told myself I bought it for the wardrobe space. I hadn’t. I’d bought it because the floor was big enough to lie down on and the door locked from the inside.
I stopped for a while. Years, even. The therapy helped. The success helped. The distance from Miami helped. I thought I was past it. I thought the man had finally outgrown the boy’s hiding,the way you outgrow nightlights and training wheels and the belief that small spaces can keep you safe.
Then I came back to Miami. Back to the company. Back to the house where my father’s ghost sat in every chair.
The closet came back, just for the bad nights—the ones when the dreams found me. Some weeks I slept in the bed without trouble. Other weeks I woke at two in the morning with my heart hammering and my skin cold. I’d lie there for twenty minutes fighting it before I gave in, walked to the closet, and laid down on the floor. I felt the walls close around me and finally, finally, breathed.
Tonight was one of those nights.
I lay on the blanket and listened to my own breathing.
My breathing slowed. My pulse settled. The nightmare retreated, not gone, never gone, but back to the edge where it watched and waited.
I was on the edge of sleep, that thin border between consciousness and wherever my mind went when I finally let it rest, when the sound came.
Footsteps in the hallway. Light, barefoot, moving past my bedroom door.
Then stopping.
Then the handle of my bedroom door turning.
My eyes opened in the dark of the closet. I held my breath and listened to Miley Torres walk into my room.
CHAPTER 16
Miley
My stupid brain would not stop replaying the kiss.
Three days. It had been three days and every time I closed my eyes I was back on that sidewalk outside the gallery with Christopher Vale’s hand on the back of my neck and his mouth on mine. I replayed it while I cooked. I replayed it while I showered. I replayed it while I was on the phone with the contractor about Sazón’s plumbing, and the poor man had to say “Ms. Torres?” three times before I snapped back to reality and asked him to repeat whatever he’d said about the pipes.
It was the kiss. It was just a kiss—for the cameras, for damage control, for Trisha’s checklist. It meant nothing.
Except I'd kissed him back. And kissing him back wasn't on any checklist.
That night, I heard his footsteps come through the front door. I lay in bed for an hour having a full debate with myself about whether I should bring him the extra dessert from one of my experiments or just go to sleep like a normal person who wasn’t obsessed with feeding a man who’d told her she wasn’t his real wife.
Normal-person Miley lost. Chef Miley won. She always won.
I padded down the hallway in bare feet with a bowl of chocolate mousse I’d made that afternoon. There was extra. It seemed wasteful to let it sit in the fridge overnight when there was a man twenty feet away who was probably surviving on bourbon.
I knocked on his bedroom door.
Nothing.
“Christopher?”
