I don't know yet. That's the part he won't give me space to figure out. She picked up her. He schedules every hour. He calls three times a day.
Every person I meet is someone he's vetted. Every event I attend is on his calendar first. She paused. I know that sounds ungrateful. It doesn't a lot of people would trade places with me.
I know, but wanting your own life isn't the same as being ungrateful for what someone gave you. Daniel set down his fork and looked at her directly. No, he said, "It's not something settled between them. Not romance. Not the beginning of anything dangerous.
Just the particular piece of two people who'd both been carrying something heavy in completely different ways and had accidentally found themselves in the same small diner at 10:00 on a Friday night being honest with each other. He thought about his own life. I thought about the way he'd reorganized every single thing after the divorce around the single goal of being stable, reliable, present, and safe, which was the right thing, which was what Amara needed. But somewhere in the process of becoming the man Amara needed him to be, he'd quietly stopped asking himself what Daniel Brooks needed. Not in a dramatic way, not in a way he could point to, just a slow incremental putting away of everything that might cost something emotionally because he couldn't afford to lose anything else.
He didn't say any of that. This wasn't the moment, and she wasn't the person. And he was, after all, still the fleet supervisor sitting across from his employer's daughter in a diner he'd chosen specifically because nobody would recognize either of them. But he heard it in himself for the first time in a while. At 10:15, Lauren looked at her phone and then at him.
I should go back. Yeah, he's going to know I wasn't taken straight home. He'll see the route on the app if he's tracking the vehicle. She looked at him. Is he?
I honestly don't know. He can. Whether he does, I have no idea. She nodded. She pulled out her wallet.
He shook his head. I've got it, Daniel. I've got it. He wasn't even sure why he said it. Old habit.
Something his father had taught him. You pay when you invite someone somewhere. And he had invited her here. She looked at him for a moment. Then she put her wallet away.
They drove back mostly in silence, the comfortable kind, which was strange given that they'd been strangers 2 hours ago. When he pulled up to the estate gate and punched in the code, he could see the house lit up through the trees. Richard's study light was on. That window was always the first one he'd learned to notice. The way employees eventually learn which lights to watch.
He pulled around to the main entrance. Lauren didn't get out immediately. Can I ask you something? She said, "Sure. When my father asks you tomorrow and he will ask, what are you going to tell him? " Daniel thought about it.