Wildfire

Chapter 33

33. Reclaim

The walk to Diego's apartment was uncomfortable. We walked a careful distant apart; him two steps ahead, close to the edge of the sidewalk while I trudged along on the inside, my boots making squelching noises in the melting snow. It was still early enough but the sky was already turning a light navy, leeching the colour from my vision.

My resolve to unravel the mystery surrounding Adalia's death was enough to push me into placing one foot in front of the other, but it did little to calm my jittery nerves or the bitter taste of anger that lingered on the tip of my tongue.

I stared at his back, my eyes tracing the flex of muscles beneath his t-shirt as he walked, and wondered how many times I had stared at his back before, never knowing who he was. When he'd just been a stranger, and I'd been hopelessly oblivious.

We reached his apartment building without a single word passing between us, but instead of feeling some measure of relief that we'd arrived, all I felt was sick.

Memories of the last time I'd been here — the panic and the adrenaline-fueled clarity, the struggle to hold him up, all the blood — flashed through my mind. It felt anti-climactic to be returning here at such a slow, casual pace.

Diego let us into the building and punched impatiently at the button for the elevator. The doors opened almost immediately and I followed him inside, moving to stand at the very back of the small, enclosed space. The doors slid shut and the uncomfortable tension between us seemed to amplify, the silence becoming almost deafening.

I folded my arms around my middle, my eyes tracing the length of the ceiling as I thought and re-thought my decision. I didn't want to be here by any stretch of the imagination but at the same time, the persistent sense of inertia that had haunted me for days had begun to slip away.

I was finally doing something to reclaim my life.

When we reached Diego's floor, I followed him to his door at a slow pace. His apartment was exactly how I remembered it: tidy and sparsely furnished, like a show-home advertising other apartments in the building. I remembered how strange the tidiness seemed to me when I first set foot inside, but it made more sense to me now. He barely lived here; it was just a place he existed in.

I hovered uncertainly inside the door of the kitchen-living area and watched as Diego set the box down on the kitchen island, his fingers lingering on the cardboard as though he didn't really want to let go.

"I have to make a few calls," he said quietly. He looked at me for the first time since I'd told him we were in this together, but his expression was closed off, unreadable. I knew he wasn't happy to have me here, but he wasn't unhappy either.

I stared back, a thousand questions on the tip of my tongue. "And then you'll catch me up?"

"It'll be easier if we wait for Marco," he said, voice remote. "I'll call him now."

Marco?

I froze as he moved toward me, my heart stilling in my chest. For a second, I thought he was going to touch me or something and I instinctively flinched away, a nervous feeling blooming in the pit of my stomach... but all he did was slip by me, his arm brushing against mine as he stepped into the hallway.

The scent of pine and outdoors washed over me.

I inhaled sharply, feeling more on edge than ever.

He walked into his room and closed the door over, but it didn't quite make it all-the-way shut. I could see a thin strip of navy duvet, the corner of a pillow and his tall, looming shadow as he moved in front of the window. I knew I shouldn't have kept staring, but it was like my muscles had seized up and my body had turned to stone.