The silence in the penthouse has a sound of its own.
It’s not the thin, fragile quiet of a place that’s empty because no one lives there; it’s the heavy, weighted stillness left behind when a man like Locke walks out the door.
The air still carries the faint, ghosted scent of his cedar-and-leather cologne, lingering near the entryway where his heavy boots usually sit, and the thick rug in front of the fireplace feels abandoned, desolate, lonely.
I sit on the edge of the leather sofa, my knees pulled up to my chest, my hands wrapped tight around a warm ceramic mug of dark roast coffee, staring at the fire.
Outside the thirty-story floor-to-ceiling glass, the city stretches out in a wash of morning gray and pale silver. Traffic down on the oceanside boulevard looks like tiny, distant be
