Chapter 4: Rain

I told Noelle I wouldn't say a word, and I meant it.

It cost me nothing.

I wanted the leaker on my side, not in a conference room with a lawyer.

By Tuesday night, Whitney had found a new use for me.

At six o'clock she put a stack of forty mockups on my desk and told me to redo every one by morning.

"Fonts," she said. "Margins. Colors. All of it."

"There's nothing wrong with the margins."

"There is now."

She left at seven, in a cloud of perfume.

By eleven the floor was empty except for me, a vacuum cleaner humming somewhere, and a lamp over a desk at the far end.

The lamp was on because Cullen was under it.

He had been under it for four hours, drawing something on a long roll of paper, and he had not once looked over.

I knew he knew I was there.

I could tell by how careful he was not to look.

At eleven-ten I closed the last file.

"Done," I said, to nobody.

"Done," he said, to the paper.

He capped his pen and came over with his jacket on one arm.

"I'll walk you out."

"You don't have to."

"It's pouring."

It was pouring.

We stood under the awning outside, and the rain came off the roof in a solid sheet.

I had no umbrella.

I had a bus pass for a rented room on the far side of the river that I did not want to go back to.

"My place is three blocks," Cullen said. "Come dry off."

"That's a terrible line."

"It's a very good line. It has worked on you once."

"It was a whiskey line last time."

"I'll find a whiskey."

I looked at him, at the rain on his lashes and the tired good humor in his gray eyes.

I had spent the whole day being small and quiet and watched.

I wanted to be wanted by someone who looked at me and saw no one else.

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