Her mouth opens. Closes. She glances at my desk, then the window, then anywhere but me.
“Actually, I need to check something in my emails first.” And then she’s gone before I can respond.
What the fuck was that?
An hour later, she does it again. Walks in, shuts the door, stands there looking like she’s about to confess to murder. Then mumbles something about a donor call and practically sprints back to her desk.
I’m going to lose my fucking mind.
The afternoon crawls. I snap at Elspeth during a budget review. Ignore three calls from Martin Hale. Stare at Bree through the glass walls until Cressida catches me and I have to pretend I was looking at something else.
By seven o’clock, the floor is empty. Just the hum of the HVAC and the distant sounds of the cleaning crew.
And her.
She’s still at her desk. Still typing. Still not leaving.
I know why. Same reason I’m not leaving. We’re both waiting for something neither of us will admit we want.
I order pizza because I haven’t eaten all day and my hands are starting to shake and I’m getting that lack-of-food headache. Also because if I have to watch her through the glass for onemore hour without some kind of distraction, I’m going to walk out there and do something stupid.
The pizza arrives. Callahan brings it up personally. He’s been giving me knowing looks for days now. The kind that say I see what’s happening and I’m professionally obligated to pretend I don’t.
I eat at my desk. Callahan heads toward the elevator banks, disappears.
That’s when she walks in again.
She closes the door behind her and stands there, and crosses her arms over her chest. “We need to talk.”
“Uh huh,” I keep eating my pizza. Not actually believing that she’s going to say anything important. Least of all what’s on her mind.
Probably will give an excuse about having to check her email again.
She swallows hard. “I want to talk about why you’ve been treating me colder than usual.”
I freeze.
Oh.
I set my pizza aside, and say, carefully, “I’ve been treating you professionally.”
“Professionally?” She laughs humorlessly. “You’ve spoken maybe thirty words to me since that night. You stare at me all day, but the moment we’re in the same room, you won’t even look at me. And you send emails instead of walking ten feet to my desk.”
“That’s called maintaining workplace boundaries, Ms. Dawson.”
“Don’t do that.” Her voice cracks slightly. “Don’t hide behind formality when we both know what happened.”
I stand up from my desk. Move toward her. Watch her shoulders tense but she doesn’t step back.
“What happened,” I say slowly, “is that you pushed me away. You made it crystal clear that you didn’t want this. Whateverthisis. So I’m giving you exactly what you asked for.”
“I didn’t...” She looks down. Swallows. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“You pushed me away and walked out. What exactly was I supposed to interpret from that?”
Her jaw tightens. “I got scared, okay? It was happening so fast and I panicked and I put my walls up and I didn’t mean to push you away but I did and then you went all glacier on me and I thought maybe I’d ruined everything and maybe you actually hated me and I didn’t know what to do so I kept trying to talk to you but every time I came in here I lost my nerve because you were looking at me like I was a stranger and I can’t do this, Nico, I can’t work here if you’re going to treat me like I’m a nobody when all I can think about is you.”
The words come out of her like a dam breaking.
