Her breath was coming too fast. She pressed her hand flat against her sternum, trying to slow it down, but her heart hammered against her palm like it was trying to escape. The room felt smaller than it had a minute ago. The walls closer.
This is what Randall did to me. He didn’t just put data in—he pushed everything else out.
She was crying. She hadn’t noticed when it started, but tears were streaming down her face now, hot and unstoppable. She swiped at them with the back of her hand, and they just kept coming.
A knock at the door caused her to jump.
Shit. She had to pull herself together. She couldn’t let Lincoln see her like this. She dropped her hands. Wiped her face. Arranged her expression into something that might pass for composed.
“Come in.”
The door opened slowly, and Lincoln stood in the gap. His posture was stiff, his shoulders rigid with an awkwardness she’d learned to recognize.
He’d rehearsed whatever he was about to say. She could see it in the careful blankness of his expression, the way he was holding himself apart.
Whatever it was, she hated that she’d forced him to do that.
“I need to apologize,” he said.
She stared at him. “For what?”
“The cliff. The kiss.” He stepped into the room but stayed near the door, keeping distance between them. “I shouldn’t have let that happen. You’re in a vulnerable state, and I took advantage of that, and I’ve clearly made you uncomfortable because today, you could barely look at me.”
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. Took a breath. Tried to process what he was saying through the fog of her own spiral.
“You’ve been pushing yourself to exhaustion,” he continued, the words coming out stilted and over-practiced. “You snap when I try to help. You avoid eye contact. The logical conclusion is that my behavior at the cliff crossed a line, and you’ve been trying to create distance ever since. I wanted you to know that I understand now, and it won’t happen again.”
He’d misread everything.
All day, watching her spiral, watching her push harder and harder until she couldn’t see straight—he’d thought she was avoidinghim. That the manic energy, the snapping, the inability to stop working long enough to breathe—all of it was about the kiss. About regretting what they’d shared at the bottom of that cliff.
She could let him believe it.
Let him think she regretted the kiss. Let him keep his distance. It would be easier than explaining the truth—easier than admitting that she was losing pieces of herself and didn’t know how to stop it.
But she looked at his face. The strong line of his jaw, tight with tension. The dark eyes that tracked data faster than anyone she’d ever met, now fixed on her with something that looked like bracing for impact. The rigid posture, the careful blankness that she now recognized as hurt.
He’d spent two days thinking he’d done something wrong, and he was standing here apologizing for the first moment of real connection she’d felt since the warehouse.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let him go on thinking that, even if she didn’t know how to explain what was really happening.
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Lincoln’s expression flickered. “Then why?—”
“Because I’m scared.” The words cracked open before she could hold them back. “Not of you. Of something else. Something I can’t—” She stopped. Shook her head. “I can’t explain it right now.”
He didn’t push. Didn’t demand clarification or logical justification. Just stood there, waiting, watching her with that focused attention that had always made her feel seen.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her voice came out barely above a whisper. “I just want to stop thinking. For one night, I want my brain to shut up.”
Lincoln stayed in the doorway. Uncertain. She could see him processing, calculating, trying to figure out the correct response to a situation that had no clear protocol.
She knew what she wanted.
“Can you help me with that?” she asked.
She watched his throat move as he swallowed. Watchedthe uncertainty give way to something else—something that looked almost like hope.
