“So what am I supposed to do?”
The question comes out tired. Defeated. Like she’s given up trying to understand any of this.
“I’m here on assignment. Am I supposed to keep cleaning until I can leave?” She shakes her head, looking down at her plate. “I know I’ve lost my job. Derrick is going to fire me for sure after all this. I don’t even care about the money anymore. I just...”
She trails off, and I feel myself crack open a little.
She’s worried about her job. About money. About all the things she was building toward before I destroyed her life.
She doesn’t know. Doesn’t understand that she’ll never have to worry about any of that again. That I’m going to spend the rest of my life taking care of her, providing for her, giving her everything she’s ever wanted.
But I can’t tell her that. Not yet. Not when she’s still looking at me like I might explode at any moment.
“You’re not cleaning anything.”
She blinks. “What?”
“You heard me. You’re not cleaning. Not the floors, not the kitchen, not the bathroom. Nothing.”
“That’s literally why I’m here.”
“Not anymore.”
She stares at me, confusion written across her face.
I can’t explain it to her. Can’t tell her that every time I watched her scrub my floors, something inside me twisted wrong. Can’t tell her that my bear has been clawing at me since she arrived, furious that our mate was on her hands and knees in our home like a servant.
It makes sense now. All of it. The agitation I felt watching her work. The way it irked me so badly to see her cleaning, organizing, doing the job she was hired to do. My bear knew before I did. She was never supposed to be cleaning for me.
She was supposed to be beside me.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” she asks.
“Whatever you want. Just not that.”
She goes quiet. I can see her trying to make sense of it, probably assuming I’m just trying to make up for being an asshole.
I’ll let her think that. For now.
It’s not uncomfortable. She’s still here. Still sitting across from me. Still looking at me with something other than fear and hatred in her eyes.
It’s more than I deserve.
“Can we start over?”
The words slip out. Her eyebrows rise.
“What?”
“A do-over.” I lean forward slightly, holding her gaze. “I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me. No reason to want anything to do with me. But I’d like the chance tochange that. To get to know you better. To let you get to know me.”
She doesn’t answer right away. I watch the hesitation cross her face, the war between what she should do and what she wants to do.
“I shouldn’t,” she says finally. “I really shouldn’t.”
My stomach drops. I nod, already preparing for rejection.
“But...” She shakes her head, something like frustration in her voice. “I don’t understand why I can’t say no.”
