Chapter 11: What It Costs

I brought the notebook, and I told him everything.

That was the rule: anything I'd otherwise make him write down.

He sat across the mended table with his hands flat on it and let me talk.

I opened my banking app and slid the phone across the table.

He read the balance, and the dates beside each deposit, and he did not say it was impossible.

"Did it pay the night I burned my hand?" he asked.

"Nothing came that night. Nothing comes here, either. It only comes for pressure."

He sat back.

"So every time I stood by that wall and watched you take somebody's guilt apart, you were being paid."

"It's not a bad job."

"It's the best job I've ever seen anyone do," he said.

He turned the phone over and slid it back to me.

"Do I get a notice?" he asked quietly. "When I look at you?"

"No."

"Good."

He stood, came around the table and held out his hand.

I took it, and he led me up the narrow stairs to the loft.

There was a lamp with a green shade.

He turned it on, and then he turned it off, and then he left it on.

"I want to see you," he said.

He undid my shirt one button at a time, and I let him.

When it came off he put his mouth against my collarbone.

I stopped being able to count anything.

Then I remembered I was supposed to.

"What's this going to cost me?" I said.

He raised his head.

"Emme."

"I mean it. I need the rate."

"Nothing between us is billable," said Mason. "You said it yourself. You said it out loud."

"I know I did."

"Then I'm holding you to it."

He picked me up by the backs of my thighs and laid me on the narrow bed.

He undressed me slowly, and he looked at everything he uncovered.

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