The color drained from her face, her expression shifting from concern to something more challenging, colder.
“Fine,” she said, her voice tightly controlled. “If that’s what you want.”
“What I want,” he said, each word precise and cutting, “is for everyone to stop pretending they can fix what can’t be fixed. Including you.”
She stepped back, stunned, the hurt in her eyes cutting through her professional mask.
“Message received,” she said quietly. Then, she turned on her heel, her footsteps quick and sharp as she headed for the stairs.
“And don’t bother coming back tomorrow,” he called after her, the words flying out before he could stop them. “I worked alone before you arrived. I can damn well continue without you.”
For a moment, the only sound that echoed through the room was his ragged breathing. Then, Riley gave a low whine, a sound of distress that cut through the sudden silence. The dog padded closer, pressing his warm bulk against Corbyn’s leg, offering comfort that wasn’t deserved.
“Don’t,” Corbyn muttered, though he didn’t push the animal away. His hands were shaking now, the adrenaline crash leaving him unsteady. “She shouldn’t have come down here.”
He knew he shouldn’t have snapped at her like that, that she hadn’t come down with any sort of malicious intent. But the shock of being caught exposed and vulnerable had triggered a defensive response so ingrained he couldn’t have stopped it. Better anger than weakness. Better to push her away than see the moment when her professional politeness gave way to revulsion.
It always happened eventually. Always.
He finished dressing with clumsy movements; the look on Sadie’s face before she fled played over and over in his mind. Riley watched, head tilted slightly as if trying to parse the complexities of human behavior that made no sense to his canine brain.
“Come on,” Corbyn said finally, his voice rough. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Riley’s tail gave a hesitant wag, relieved they were moving past whatever storm had broken over them. The dog led the way to the stairs, pausing at the top to look back, ensuring his human followed.
Corbyn climbed slowly, and that brief moment of hurt on Sadie’s face before she masked it played in his mind over and over again. He’d have to face her again at lunch. Sit across from her at the table and pretend that nothing had happened while the weight of his outburst hung between them. At some point, he would have to find a way to apologize for his behavior, although his wounded pride bristled at the very idea.
He rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and stopped short. Edie stood there, arms crossed over her flour-dusted apron, her small frame somehow blocking the entire space between the stairs and the kitchen. She wore an expression onher face that he hadn’t seen since he was fifteen and got caught sneaking alcohol out to the greenhouse to drink with his friends.
“Sadie just bolted out of here like the house was on fire,” Edie said without preamble, her voice low and hard, the gentle lilt of her accent sharpened by disapproval. “Face white as a sheet. What did you do?”
Corbyn moved past her, slumping onto a bar stool at the kitchen island. His body suddenly became too heavy for his legs to hold upright as shame washed over him. He scrubbed a hand across his jaw, feeling the rough stubble there, a reminder of how long it had been since he’d made himself presentable.
“She caught me half-stripped,” he muttered, the words grinding like gravel. “Told her to get out.”
Edie’s stare bore into him, steady and unyielding. Her eyes, a warm brown that usually held a maternal twinkle, were now flat and hard. She said nothing, just waited, the silence that stretched between them worse than her yelling.
Riley trotted back around the island, sensing the tension. The dog paused halfway between them, head swiveling, before settling on the floor with a heavy sigh that seemed to express the weariness of dealing with humans more eloquently than words.
“What?” Corbyn growled, uncomfortable under Edie’s scrutiny.
“You’ve told her to get out before, and it didn’t send her running,” Edie replied, continuing to stare at him in that way that told him she was just waiting for him to admit to what she already knew.
“I… snapped,” he admitted grudgingly. “I said things I shouldn’t… but she shouldn’t have come down to the pool.”
“She went down there because I sent her,” Edie replied, her voice clipped. “To tell you lunch was ready. Not to be barked at like some trespasser.”
Corbyn shifted on the stool, pain flaring in his lower back.
“She saw everything,” he said, gesturing vaguely at his chest, the words coming out more defensive than he intended. “All of it.”
“And?” Edie’s eyebrow rose, a perfect arch of skepticism. “Did she run screaming? Point and laugh? What exactly did she do that warranted you sending her off like that?”
The question hung in the air, uncomfortable and pointed. Corbyn glared at the floor, unwilling to admit that Sadie had done none of those things. She’d simply looked at him. There had been surprise, but without the reflexive disgust he’d grown accustomed to seeing, without the careful pity that somehow hurt worse.
“She stared,” he said finally, the accusation sounding weak even to his ears.
“For about two seconds, I’d wager,” Edie countered, unmoved. “You have scars. There’s no getting around that fact. A moment of being surprised is natural, and knowing that girl, that’s all it was.”
