“Because now they’ll talk more.”
“Let them.”
“You made a scene.”
“Yes.”
“That kind of thing matters to you.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Apparently not as much as I thought.”
Maya searched his face. In the hotel he had looked furious. Out here, under the softened streetlight and the shine of rainwater on black asphalt, he looked something stranger than angry. Off balance, maybe. Or wounded in a place pride usually covered too quickly to see.
She said, more quietly, “You didn’t have to claim me like that.”
His gaze held hers. “I didn’t claim you.”
The valet pulled the car around. The city hissed and breathed around them.
Taylor opened her door himself. “I defended you.”
Maya got in without answering.
The ride downtown was silent except for the muted sweep of the wipers and the occasional blur of tires through shallow street water. Manhattan passed in fragments: steamed-up deli windows, late diners under red neon, a man in a dark coat walking fast with his collar turned up, scaffolding glowing pale under sodium lights. Maya leaned her head back and closed her eyes for a moment.
