“My health is no concern of yours.”
“Isn’t it?” His voice dipped, flirtation laced with something more dangerous—something tender and real that I didn’t know how to face.
“No.”
“I could make you feel better,” he murmured, closer now. My eyes fluttered shut, then sprung open as he continued. “Really get your blood pumping. Melt some of that ice you wear like armor.”
His smirk lit his face like a match, and still, I couldn’t look directly at him. If I did, I’d fall to my knees. I’dbeg.
“I… you?—”
“Theo.”
I flinched like he’d struck me. Like we’d been acting out every fantasy that played on repeat through my mind.
The office door banged open, and Timothy strode in, smug and seething. His eyes darted between us, landing like poison on Sinclair. “What areyoudoing here?” he snapped.
My hands balled into fists at my sides. My teeth clamped down on the inside of my cheek. It took everything in me not to tell him to get the fuck out.
Sinclair cleared his throat. “Just seeing if ourmanager—” he dragged the word out like honey over a knife “—needed anything before I went on break.”
Timothy scoffed. “You?”
Sin didn’t flinch. He just smiled. “Oh, I’mverygood at my job, Timothy. Thorough. I like to make sure everyone leaves… satisfied.”
Timothy flushed dark red, it crawled up his neck, rising to his hairline. “Well?”
Sinclair turned to me. Something defiant gleamed in his eyes, but there was something else too. I couldn’t name it without crumbling.
“I… I’ll have a latte,” I forced the words through my teeth. “Thank you, Sinclair.”
He smiled again. Soft. Knowing. “My pleasure,” he purred.
As he stepped out, he sent me a wink that knocked the last of the air from my lungs. The door clicked shut behind him. I stood frozen in my office, chest heaving, hands shaking,completely undone.
And still—I wanted to chase him. Even if it destroyed me.
Timothy groaned on about people overstepping their position and how nobody showed him the respect he deserved. His voice was like an insect buzzing around my head, driving me insane.
My fists clenched and unclenched. My chest felt hollow. My whole body buzzed like it had short-circuited. I was shaking not from fear or desire. From something deeper—older—buried so far inside me, I’d pretended for years it didn’t exist.
But the thing about pretending? It always cracks. The truth you’ve buried always comes out.
My knees buckled. I collapsed into the chair behind my desk, breathing hard, like I’d run a mile with no air.
The knock of a belt buckle against leather. The thunder of footsteps on marble floors.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”The voice didn’t come from the hallway. It came from the past. From my father.
The air turned cold.
I was fifteen again. Back in my room at the summer estate. The window open, a warm breeze made the curtain billow. The boy from the stables—Daniel—was half a second away from kissing me when the door slammed open with the force of an explosion.
My father filled the frame, rage clinging to him like smoke. His eyes landed on our proximity. My flushed face. One of Daniel’s hands was still touching my wrist, the other buried in my curls.
The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.
It was deadly.
