Exactly three months and one week since he’d told me to pack my things and get out of his bed.
One sighting of his name on the summit program and every nerve ending I had lit up like a warning system.
Avoid him.
That was the plan. With a hundred people in the building and at least twelve exits, it shouldn’t have been that hard.
I breathed in slowly through my nose, out through my mouth. Counted the breath. Tried to remember which version of myself I was supposed to be at a global merger summit.
“Madeline.”
God. No. I was beginning to think I had personally offended a god in another life.
I went rigid hearing his voice for the first time in months.
For one wild second, I considered pretending I hadn’t heard. Just staying exactly as I was, forehead nearly against the glass, and hoping the floor swallowed me.
Then the old training cut in.
Turn. Face. Don’t show your throat while you’re bleeding.
I straightened, smoothed my hand down the front of my dress, and turned around.
Vince stood halfway down the corridor, hands in his pockets like he owned the building by default.
The black suit. The open collar. The tattoos peeking from his throat. The kind of control in his shoulders that made other men move out of his way before he even spoke.
He’d always looked deadly. Tonight he looked… untouched. Like the last three months had left no mark at all.
His gaze traveled over me in one quick pass. Not slow enough to be intimate, not fast enough to be casual. An inventory check.
He stopped a few feet away.
“Mr. Crow,” I said, because my mouth needed something to do.
His jaw clenched almost imperceptibly at the title. “Madeline.”
Silence stretched between us. Not the comfortable kind.
“You left the table,” he said. “You looked?—”
“Like shit?” I offered lightly. My throat was too tight for it to land as a joke.
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Unwell.”
I shrugged, aiming for careless, hitting somewhere closer to brittle. “Summits are exhausting. I needed air.”
His gaze flicked briefly to the window behind me, then back. “You’ve lost weight.”
I flinched before I could stop it. “Congratulations. You and my mother finally agree on something.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s what everyone means when they say it. I’m twenty. Thin is the assignment, isn’t it? Gold star for me.”
He watched me quietly. “How long have you been like this?”
Like this. Like I was a condition.
