I find my voice. "The same. I didn't even realize he was in the room until—" I gesture vaguely at my nose. "It hit me before I saw him."
"Had you met before?"
"Sort of."
Glass raises his eyebrows. “Sort of?”
Carter's thumb is moving against my palm again. "At a masquerade gala, three weeks earlier,” he says. “We never spoke. Never even saw each other's faces. But his scent stayed with me all that time. I’d never experienced anything like it and I had no idea who it belonged to. Not until I walked onto this set."
Glass's eyebrows rise. This is clearly better than he expected. "So you'd been, what, haunted by each other? For weeks? Without knowing who the other person was?"
"Something like that," I say. "I thought I was going crazy. Kept catching traces of it everywhere, except it was never really there. It was just... stuck in my head."
"And then you saw him on my show, and suddenly you knew."
"Suddenly I knew."
"Except the man you'd been dreaming about was Carter Crane the third, and you had just publicly destroyed his reputation."
The word 'destroyed' hangs in the air. I feel Carter tense beside me.
"I published documented facts about corruption," I say evenly. "If those facts destroyed anything, that's not my responsibility. It's theirs."
"Mm." Glass doesn't push—not yet. He's saving that for later. "So here you are, eight months later. Sitting side by side on my show instead of at each other's throats. What happened in between?"
Carter and I exchange another look. This is the part where we're careful.
"We tried to fight it," Carter says. "Both of us. Neither of us wanted this. We told ourselves we could ignore it. That willpower would be enough." Carter's laugh is hollow. "Obviously, that didn't work."
"Why not?"
"Have you ever tried to ignore a prime match?" Carter asks.
Glass leans forward. “So thisisa prime match?”
I meet Carter’s eyes. This time I answer. “Yes. We haven’t been tested but it is. Every cell in my body knows it.”
I shift on the couch, trying to ease the pressure on my lower back. The baby chooses that moment to roll, a slow, heavy movement that makes my breath catch. I press my hand to the spot, waiting for her to settle.
"Are you all right?" Glass asks, and there's genuine concern in his voice—or a convincing imitation of it.
"Fine. She's just... active today."
"She?"
Shit. We hadn't planned to, but it's out now. "Yeah. It's a girl."
Glass's expression shifts, softens into something that looks almost human. "A daughter. Congratulations."
"Thank you."
"I have to ask. is the baby the reason you're going public now?"
"Part of it." Carter takes over, letting me catch my breath. "But not all of it. We're going public because we're tired of hiding. Because the rumors about Jamie aren’t true, and we're not going to let them stand anymore."
"The whole stalker omega narrative."
"It's a lie." Carter's voice sharpens. "Jamie didn't pursue me. He tried to cut contact entirely. He changed his number, moved apartments, avoided every place he thought I might be.If anyone was obsessed, it was me. I kept finding ways to reach him."
